BL  48  . B7 
Brewster, 


1923 

Edwin  Tenney, 


1866 


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THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/understandingofrOObrew 


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THE  “PTOLEMAIC”  UNIVERSE  OF  THE  LATE  MIDDLE  AGES 

At  the  center  is  the  earth,  surrounded  by  the  three  other  elements  —  water,  air.  and 
fire.  Outside  these  are,  successively,  the  heavens  of  the  Moon,  Mercury,  Venus,  the 
Sun,  Mars,  Jupiter,  and  Saturn,  the  starry  firmament  with  the  twelve  Zodiacal  signs, 
the  crystal  sphere,  and  the  pritnum  mobile.  Surrounding  all,  but  eccentric  toward  the 
upper,  inhabited  side  of  the  earth,  is  the  Empyrean,  where  sits  the  Almighty,  attended 
by  nine  ranks  of  celestial  beings  as  listed  at  the  left.  At  the  corners  are  the  four  winds. 

From  the  Nuremberg  Chronicle  (1493). 


THE  UNDERSTANDING 
OF  RELIGION 


BY 

V 

EDWIN  TENNEY  BREWSTER,  A.M. 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
HXtbersfoe  $Dres«  Cambridge 
1923 


COPYRIGHT,  1923,  BY  EDWIN  T.  BREWSTER 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


®fje  SUbetsfoe  $hregg 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED  IN  THE  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 


If  this  book  contained  any  theology,  I  should 
not  have  written  it.  I  know  nothing  whatever 
about  theology;  nor  have  I,  so  far  as  I  am  aware, 
any  opinion  whatever  on  any  strictly  theologi¬ 
cal  matter.  But  religion  is,  fortunately,  a  great 
deal  more  than  theology. 

Religion  is,  in  fact,  really  a  branch  of  Natural 
History.  That  is  to  say,  it  is  one  of  those  sub¬ 
jects  on  which  any  one  of  us  may  hope  for  some 
sound  understanding  merely  by  keeping  his  eyes 
open,  and  reflecting  upon  what  he  sees  in  the 
light  of  what  other  men  have  reported  of  their 
observations,  precisely  as  one  does  with  any 
other  out-of-door  matter. 

Now  it  so  happens  that,  for  a  third  of  a  century 
or  so,  I  have  been  engaged  off  and  on  in  calling 
the  attention  of  young  persons  and  others  to 
various  aspects  of  rocks  and  hills  and  trees 
which  otherwise  they  were,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
not  noticing.  I  hope  now,  trusting  to  the  same 
devices,  to  point  out  certain  aspects  of  religion 
which,  also  as  a  matter  of  fact,  too  many  people 
are,  it  seems  to  me,  passing  by  on  the  other  side. 
We  of  the  older  generation,  moreover,  who  in  the 
course  of  time  have  become  more  or  less  wonted 
to  this  unintelligible  world,  are  apt  to  flatter 
ourselves  that  mere  multitude  of  days  brings 

v 


PREFACE 


wisdom.  We  schoolmasters,  in  addition,  do 
somewhat  justify  our  existence  by  learning  by 
dint  of  practice  to  take  apart  an  obscure  and 
complex  matter,  and  to  feed  it  out,  easy  end  first. 

It  occurred  to  me,  too,  naturally  enough,  I 
think,  that,  as  I  found  myself  approaching  the 
time  of  life  beyond  which  men  somewhat  rarely 
correct  erroneous  views,  it  would  be  the  part  of 
wisdom  for  me  to  run  over  various  of  my  long¬ 
standing  opinions,  and  to  make  out  how  these 
relate  themselves  to  present-day  knowledge.  I 
am,  it  chances,  practiced  in  no  other  method  of 
arriving  at  truth  than  the  scientific;  and  I  have 
attempted  by  that  method  to  come  to  some  un¬ 
derstanding  of  the  phenomena  of  religion  which 
I  observe  around  me.  What  I  have  noted,  I 
have  here  set  down  for  the  benefit  of  other  like- 
minded  persons,  either  my  contemporaries,  or, 
as  I  hope,  of  younger  men  and  women,  who, 
emerging  into  a  wider  intellectual  life  than  has 
been  theirs,  find  themselves  for  the  moment 
more  or  less  at  sea.  I  write  as  a  layman,  for 
other  laymen.  Possibly,  nevertheless,  an  occa¬ 
sional  cleric  may  be  curious  to  know  what  his 
parishioners  think  about  between  sermons. 

I  have  observed,  as  I  have  come  into  contact 
with  a  somewhat  wide  range  of  religious  opinion, 
that  a  great  many  unscientific  people  are  quite 
unnecessarily  confused  over  matters  which  to 
the  scientific  seem  perfectly  straightforward.  I 

vi 


PREFACE 


note  also  that  many  good  people  view  with  quite 
unnecessary  alarm  the  “oppositions  of  science 
falsely  so-called,”  for  no  better  reason  than  that, 
having  taken  their  scientific  ideas  at  something 
like  fourth  hand,  these  are  not  seldom  just  about 
the  reverse  of  those  which  scientific  persons 
suppose  themselves  to  entertain.  On  this  matter 
I  have  touched,  though  somewhat  more  lightly, 
perhaps,  than  it  deserves. 

I  am  especially  concerned,  however,  with  that 
very  considerable  group,  both  of  adults  and  of 
the  young,  who  fail  to  see  their  way  amid  con¬ 
flicting  views,  chiefly  for  the  reason  that  they 
have  no  idea  where  either  alternative  comes 
from.  A  little  knowledge  of  the  history  of  ideas 
settles  many  disputes  offhand.  This  seems  to  me 
to  be  conspicuously  the  case  in  the  present-day 
controversy,  among  both  Protestants  and  Ro¬ 
man  Catholics,  between  the  conservative  and 
the  “modernist”  parties,  some  aspects  of  which 
lie  in  that  middle  ground  between  science  and  di¬ 
vinity,  where  a  student  of  the  natural  order  may 
venture  an  opinion.  One  point  of  my  little  vol¬ 
ume  is  to  offer  a  sort  of  itinerary  in  a  portion  of 
this  field. 

If  I  may  judge  at  all  from  my  own  experience, 

a  study  of  the  sort  which  I  have  outlined  should 

have  two  effects.  One  ought,  in  the  first  place, 

to  come  to  see  more  accurately  than  he  has  just 

what  is  and  what  is  not  possible  of  belief  in  this 

•  • 

Vll 


PREFACE 


our  modern  world.  In  the  second  place,  one 
ought,  as  a  result,  to  gain  a  notably  greater  tol¬ 
erance  for  opinions  that  differ  from  his  own. 
After  all,  we  are,  each  of  us,  dealing  with  vastly 
complicated,  age-long  problems.  It  is  highly 
improbable  that  any  of  our  present-day  conclu¬ 
sions  are  final,  or  that  the  wisest  of  us  believes 
more  truth  than  error.  On  the  other  hand,  most 
of  those  opinions  which  seem  to  us  of  the  present 
age  utterly  fantastic  and  absurd,  were  each  of 
them,  in  its  day,  sound  and  recent  and  inevitable. 
Men  have  said  hard  things  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton 
for  clinging  somewhat  too  long  to  his  early  the¬ 
ory  concerning  the  nature  of  light  —  and  now 
“the  New  Physics”  goes  back  to  Newton’s  view 
of  light,  while  at  the  same  time  it  questions 
Newtonian  gravitation!  To  scoff  at  any  serious 
opinion  is  not  to  have  read  history. 

I  am  quite  aware  that  in  crowding  such  large 
topics  into  so  small  space,  I  have,  in  more  in¬ 
stances  than  I  should  have  liked,  made  my  ac¬ 
count  of  various  matters  a  great  deal  too  sche¬ 
matic.  Any  critic  who  cares  to  be  nasty  can 
undoubtedly  play  horse  with  me  on  several 
points.  But  the  one  thing  that  I  am  trying  to  do 
is  to  set  up  a  guidepost  that  will  send  my  reader 
to  the  libraries,  there  to  run  down  the  actual 
facts  for  himself.  Whoso  will  do  that  need  have 
no  fear  that  he  will  go  astray  in  any  present-day 
confusion  of  opinion.  So  far  as  my  reader  finds 


vui 


PREFACE 

me  in  error,  this  should  but  add  zest  to  his  own 
search  for  truth. 

Inevitably,  in  all  these  circumstances,  some 
of  those  who  open  these  pages  are  going  to  en¬ 
counter  an  occasional  idea  to  which  they  are  not 
yet  altogether  used,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  they 
are  likely  also  to  miss  a  good  deal  that  they  ex¬ 
pect  to  hear  whenever  religion  is  discussed.  To 
such  I  can  only  say  that  information  new  to 
them  will  probably  not  in  the  end  do  them 
any  special  harm ;  while  the  old  truths,  already 
familiar,  they  can  always  add  for  themselves. 
Doubtless,  I  also  should  have  said  exactly  the 
same  thing  if  I  had  had  more  space. 

The  important  matter  nowadays  in  the  sphere 
of  religion,  so  far  as  this  is  a  matter  of  taking 
thought,  is  that  we  shall  all  turn  to  and  make  up 
our  minds  exactly  what  we  actually  do  believe, 
what  the  evidence  is  for  each  belief,  and  what  is 
the  reason  for  the  particular  form  which  our 
various  opinions  take  in  our  own  minds.  Some¬ 
thing  of  this  I  have  attempted  to  do  for  certain 
special  topics.  For  us  all  to  do  this,  each  for 
himself,  throughout  the  whole  range  of  Christian 
doctrine,  would  go  far  toward  making  straight 
the  way  of  that  “New  Reformation”  which 
our  modern  world  sadly  needs,  and  of  which, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  the  signs  are  already  manifest. 

E.  T.  B. 

Andover,  Massachusetts 


ix 


I  . 


CONTENTS 


I.  What  is  Religion?  t  i 

II.  The  Three  Parts  of  a  Religion  14 

III.  Religion  and  World- View  25 

IV.  The  Astronomy  of  the  Bible  36 

V.  The  Cosmology  of  the  Creeds  51 

VI.  Our  Four  Sources  of  Opinion  63 

VII.  Science  and  Things-in-Themselves  74 

VIII.  Primitive  Souls  and  Ghosts  86 

IX.  The  Problem  of  Survival  107 

X.  “The  New  Reformation”  124 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  “Ptolemaic”  Universe  of  the  Late  Mid¬ 
dle  Ages  Frontispiece 

From  the  original  hand-colored  plate  in  the  Nuremberg 
Chronicle  (1493). 

Map  of  the  World  by  Hecateus  (517  b.c.)  39 

From  James  Henry  Breasted’s  Ancient  Times:  A  His¬ 
tory  of  the  Early  World ,  Boston,  Ginn  &  Co.,  1916. 

The  Primitive  Cosmos  41 

From  the  Junian  manuscript  (probably  tenth  century) 
of  Caedmon’s  seventh-century  Anglo-Saxon  epic  “The 
Fall  of  Man.”  Reproduced  from  Volume  xxiv  of 
Archceologia;  or ,  Miscellaneous  Tracts  relating  to  Antiq¬ 
uity ,  published  by  the  Society  of  Antiquarians  of 
London,  1832. 

Schiaparelli’s  Interpretation  of  Old  Testa-  " 

ment  Cosmology  45 

From  G.  Schiaparelli’s  Astronomy  in  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment. 

The  Three-Storied  Universe  of  Ancient 
Times  and  the  Early  Middle  Ages  49 

From  the  Junian  manuscript  of  Caedmon’s  “Fall  of 
Man.”  Reproduced  from  Archceologia ,  Volume  xxiv. 

Dante’s  Universe,  1300  55 

Adapted  from  S.  H.  Gurteen’s  Epic  of  the  Fall  of  Man. 

Milton’s  Universe,  1667-1674  57 

Adapted  from  Gurteen. 


Xlll 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Achilles  drags  Hector’s  Body  round  the 
Grave-Mound  of  Patroklos;  Hector’s 
Psyche  above  the  Corpse  89 

Drawing  from  a  Greek  vase,  reproduced  from  S.  Rei- 
nach’s  Repertoire  des  Vases  Peints  Grecs  et  Etrusques. 

The  Soul-Weighing  of  Hector  and  Achilles  99 

Drawing  from  a  Greek  vase,  reproduced  from  A.  Bau- 
meister’s  Bilder  aus  dem  Griechischen  und  Rdmischen 
Alterthum. 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


THE  UNDERSTANDING 

OF  RELIGION 

•  • 

CHAPTER  I 

WHAT  IS  RELIGION?  - 

We  are  all  agreed  that  religion  is  a  highly  im¬ 
portant  matter.  History  is  on  that  side.  So,  too, 
is  common  observation.  And  yet,  oddly  enough, 
we  cannot  at  all  agree  as  to  exactly  what  is  or 
is  not  “  religion,”  nor  what  the  word  ought  to 
mean,  nor  what  the  Romans  meant  when  they 
said  religio.  Attempts  at  definition  run  all  the 
way  from  visiting  the  fatherless  and  widows  in 
their  affliction  and  keeping  one’s  self  unspotted 
from  the  world,  which  is  pure  morality  and  not 
religion  at  all,  to  “the  sum  of  all  those  motives 
which  lead  a  man  to  the  performance  of  those 
acts  which  he  conceives  intellectually  to  be  his 
duty,”  from  which  all  morality  is  expressly  ex¬ 
cluded.  Neither  form  of  words  at  all  suggests 
actual  religions  as  we  see  them  under  our  eyes. 

On  the  whole,  probably,  the  best  working  def¬ 
inition  is  Matthew  Arnold’s  oft-quoted,  “moral¬ 
ity  touched  with  emotion.”  But  there  are  so 
many  highly  moral  persons  whose  joy  in  the 

I 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


Lord  is  only  of  the  faintest,  and  so  many  highly 
emotional  persons  whose  morality  will  hardly 
pass  muster,  that  one  is  sorely  tempted  at  times 
to  take  the  other  horn  of  the  dilemma,  and  to 
say  with  Schleiermacher  that  “religion  has 
nothing  to  do  with  morality.” 

The  real  trouble  with  us  all,  Arnold  and 
Cicero  and  Schleiermacher  and  the  people  who 
make  dictionaries  alike,  is  that  we  are  too  aca¬ 
demic.  We  approach  the  problem  of  religion 
from  the  point  of  view  of  highly  civilized  and 
sophisticated  persons,  who  know  religions  only 
on  their  higher  levels,  and  who  quite  lack  any 
realizing  sense  of  what  life  would  be  without 
policemen  and  insurance  companies. 

But  religion  did  not  begin  in  churches  or 
libraries,  among  scholarly  priests  and  well- 
dressed  worshipers.  Religion  took  its  start  in 
dens  and  caves  of  the  earth,  among  naked  and 
hungry  men,  whose  chief  thought  for  the  mor¬ 
row  was  whether  they  should  be  alive  at  all,  and 
whose  morality,  such  as  they  had,  was  shot 
through  by  one  emotion  only  —  a  primitive  and 
ever-present  fear.  We  get  at  the  essence  of  re¬ 
ligion  only  by  studying  it  at  its  beginning  as  well 
as  at  its  end,  precisely  as  in  these  evolutionary 
days,  the  proper  study  of  mankind  is  Drosophila 
and  the  guinea  pig.  All  our  definitions  of  reli¬ 
gion,  all  our  classification  of  actual  religions, 
ought  to  rest  on  very  much  less  complicated  ex- 

2 


WHAT  IS  RELIGION? 

amples  than  those  which  most  of  us  know  at 
first  hand. 

Come  at  from  this  point  of  view,  “ religion” 
proves  to  have  at  least  four  different  meanings. 
These  blend  into  one  another.  Each  separate, 
organized  religion  commonly  embodies  more 
than  one  sense.  Men  may  worship  side  by  side, 
use  the  same  formulas,  and  yet  have  quite  dif¬ 
ferent  ideas  as  to  what  their  religion  is  all  about. 
Nevertheless,  in  the  end,  there  is  no  thinking 
clearly  about  religion  unless  one  keeps  the  four 
meanings  of  the  word  separate  in  his  mind. 

These  four  meanings  correspond  to  four  his¬ 
torical  stages  in  the  evolution  of  actual  religions. 
Convenient  names  are: 

Nature  religions. 

Tribal  and  national  religions. 

Religions  of  morality. 

Religions  of  redemption. 

No  one  of  these,  to  be  sure,  in  actual  practice, 
excludes  any  of  the  rest.  Each,  also,  in  actual 
practice,  includes  survivals  and  anticipations  of 
most  of  the  others.  Nevertheless,  there  are  these 
four  stages.  And  since  every  actual  religion  is, 
in  some  form  or  other,  an  offer  of  salvation,  the 
stages  of  religious  advance  and  the  meaning  of 
the  word  itself  must  always  turn  on  the  objects 
which  men  fear  and  from  which  they  look4to  their 
religion  to  protect  them. 

Religion,  then,  begins  in  fear;  and  the  way  to 

3 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


understand  religion  is  to  begin  with  primitive 
man  and  to  see  just  what  it  was  that  he  was 
afraid  of.  From  that  point  we  may  pass  with 
profit  to  times  nearer  our  own  and  to  men  who 
fear  something  different,  until  we  reach  our¬ 
selves  and  our  own  terrors.  Ultimately,  all  in¬ 
terpretation  of  actual  religion  rests  on  the  dif¬ 
ferent  objects  which  inspire  dread  and  the  differ¬ 
ent  means  by  which  fear  is,  in  the  end,  cast  out. 

Early  man,  then,  with  the  best  of  reasons, 
fears  most  of  all  the  forces  of  nature.  His  prob¬ 
lem  of  survival  narrows  down  to  coping  with 
storm  and  drought,  plague,  pestilence,  and  fam¬ 
ine,  wild  beasts  and  the  chances  of  the  dark. 
Against  these,  he  is,  in  his  own  strength,  de¬ 
fenseless.  Therefore,  he  looks  to  his  religion  to 
protect  him. 

Thus,  the  Lake  Superior  Indian,  starting  off 
in  his  canoe,  scatters  tobacco  on  the  water  and 
prays  for  calm  weather;  or,  caught  in  a  storm, 
appeases  the  angry,  tempest-raising  divinity  by 
throwing  overboard  a  dog.  Most  hunters  with 
sling  and  bow  half  beseech,  half  compel  by 
charms,  buffalo  god,  bear  god,  and  the  rest,  not 
to  let  the  quarry  wander  too  far  afield  and  not 
to  lay  to  their  charge  the  death  of  their  prey.  No 
primitive  husbandman  plants  his  field  without 
some  sort  of  religious  exercise  to  make  the  seed 
sprout;  or  reaps  the  harvest  without  expressing 
to  the  vegetation  gods  his  lively  sense  of  favors 

4 


WHAT  IS  RELIGION? 


to  come.  All  over  the  world,  men  have  burled 
living  things  or  appropriate  objects  under  corner 
stones  of  buildings  to  make  the  walls  stand  up. 
The  horrible  sacrifices  of  the  Aztecs  were  to  help 
the  sun  through  the  sky.  Even  in  modern  times 
the  people  of  Egypt  have  looked  to  an  imme¬ 
morial  ceremony  to  aid  the  Nile  to  rise. 

Early  religion  is,  of  course,  two  thirds  magic. 
But  on  the  face  of  things,  it  does  work.  At  any 
rate,  primitive  man  does  not  experiment  with 
the  chance  of  slow  or  sudden  death  by  omitting 
any  religious  form  which  his  medicine  man  rec¬ 
ommends.  Therefore  are  all  nature  religions 
alike,  the  world  over.  They  all  include  the  whole 
of  life,  even  to  matters  of  diet,  the  phase  of  the 
moon  on  which  the  believer  has  his  hair  cut,  and 
the  terms  in  which  he  is  to  address  his  mother- 
in-law.  They  all  claim  to  influence  the  course  of 
nature,  and  thus  to  secure  salvation  from  very 
practical  ills.  They  all,  therefore,  promise  some 
form  of  worldly  prosperity.  Their  fundamental 
ideas  survive  through  all  the  stages  above. 

For  most  of  us  the  nearest  contact  with  a  re¬ 
ligion  of  this  type  is  by  way  of  the  Greeks,  among 
whom  large  fragments  of  primitive  cultus  per¬ 
sisted  long  after  they  should  have  been  absorbed 
into  the  next  stage  of  evolution.  There  are 
glimpses,  also,  of  ancient  nature  gods  in  certain 
of  the  early  fragments  embedded  in  our  Book  of 
Genesis. 


5 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


Survivals  into  our  own  time  are  numerous  and 
apparent.  Here  belong  all  prayers  for  rain  and 
fair  weather,  many  healing  cults,  the  obsolete 
Fast  Day  and  the  still  flourishing  Thanksgiving, 
all  feelings  of  added  safety  during  thunder-storms 
when  there  is  a  Bible  in  the  house.  One  ought 
not  to  speak  slightingly  of  any  faith,  even  though 
it  attempt  to  move  mountains.  At  the  same 
time  we  ought  frankly  to  recognize  that  religion, 
in  the  sense  of  a  more  or  less  magical  device  for 
changing  the  position  of  material  bodies  in  space, 
does  belong  to  a  cultural  level,  from  which,  in 
other  fields,  the  world  is  pretty  much  clear. 

The  next  stage  in  the  evolution  of  religion, 
with  the  corresponding  alteration  in  the  meaning 
of  the  word,  arises  by  slow  degrees,  as  men  settle 
into  organized  communities,  with  more  or  less 
permanent  abodes,  dependable  crops  or  herds, 
efficient  weapons,  and  personal  property.  They 
have  put  down  the  wild  beasts,  have  sheltered 
themselves  from  the  weather,  have  learned  to 
carry  their  food  supply  through  the  slack  season. 
Though  they  still  have  to  fear  all  that  early  man 
feared  —  as,  indeed,  even  we  still  do  to-day 
—  these  fears  are  becoming  somewhat  remote. 
Means  of  protection  have  come  a  good  deal 
under  men’s  control. 

The  pressing  fear  now  is  raiding  neighbors 
with  an  eye  to  movable  goods.  Whereupon  some 
old  nature  divinity  with  a  local  shrine  within  the 

6 


WHAT  IS  RELIGION? 


tribal  territories  develops  into  a  tribal  god.  The 
deity  who  formerly  managed  the  winds  or  the 
thunder  now  gives  his  people  victory  over  the 
worshipers  of  other  similar  gods,  and  confirms 
their  title  to  whatever  articles  of  value  they  have 
been  able  to  annex.  Relation  between  divinity 
and  worshiper  is  a  good  deal  a  matter  of  bargain. 
The  one  offers  sacrifices  and  observes  the  cere¬ 
monial  law.  The  other  reciprocates  with  pros¬ 
perity  and  victories.  The  same  convenient  ar¬ 
rangement  on  a  larger  scale,  commonly  with  a 
greater  number  of  gods,  becomes  any  one  of  the 
great  national  religions  of  ancient  times. 

The  Hebrews  are  at  this  level  throughout 
much  of  the  earlier  portion  of  the  Old  Testament. 
So,  too,  are  the  Romans,  well  into  the  Christian 
era.  For  the  Romans,  like  the  Greeks,  had  no 
great  turn  for  religion;  and  remained  to  the  end, 
in  these  matters,  much  below  their  cultural  level. 
Therefore,  the  Roman  Government  persecuted 
the  early  church  in  pure  self-defense;  and  even 
beyond  400  a.d.,  no  less  a  person  than  St.  Augus¬ 
tine  felt  it  necessary  to  devote  no  small  part  of 
his  “Civitas  Dei”  to  a  somewhat  disingenuous 
refutation  of  the  current  opinion  that  the  sack 
of  Rome  by  Alaric  was  in  punishment  of  apos¬ 
tasy  from  the  ancient  gods.  The  same  order  of 
ideas  controls  those  excellent  persons  who  refuse 
to  vote  because  “there  is  no  mention  of  the  Deity 
in  the  Constitution.”  There  was  also  Unser  Gott. 

7 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


But  with  the  rise  of  the  great  empires  came 
also  individualism.  For  men’s  minds  turn  in¬ 
ward  both  when  they  have  acquired  “more 
country  than  they  can  love,”  and  when  an  ex¬ 
panding  world  power  has  swallowed  up  the  little 
country  that  was  theirs.  Religion,  in  response, 
while  still  remaining  in  effect  a  contract,  is  no 
longer  a  covenant  between  God  and  the  State. 
It  now  becomes  a  relation  between  God  and  the 
individual  man.  Thus,  for  the  first  time,  religion 
tends  to  become  a  private  affair. 

Of  these  “religions  of  morality,”  Pharisaism 
is  perhaps  the  best-known  instance.  A  better 
example  still,  in  many  ways,  is  the  old  “Reli¬ 
gion  of  Zoroaster,”  of  which  we  have  glimpses  in 
the  later  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  from  which 
the  Pharisees  seem  to  have  borrowed  many  of 
their  important  ideas,  and  by  the  name  of  whose 
God  we  blasphemously  call  our  electric  lamps. 

The  upland  of  Persia  is  a  lean  country  at  best, 
where  men  make  a  living  at  all  only  by  the  dili¬ 
gent  practice  of  the  heathen  virtues.  So  the  Maz- 
dayasnians  abolished  fasting  in  the  interests  of 
efficiency;  and  while  they  did  retain  prayers 
and  ceremonial  law,  they  made  their  final  salva¬ 
tion  depend  chiefly  on  actual  good  deeds.  Kill¬ 
ing  vermin,  digging  up  weeds,  feeding  stray  dogs, 
tending  cows,  marrying  inside  the  family,  all 
went  in  to  swell  the  man’s  account  and  to  widen 
the  bridge  on  which  his  soul  would  have  to 

8 


WHAT  IS  RELIGION? 


make  its  way  over  the  abyss  into  paradise.  The 
righteous  man  was  saved,  not  so  much  by  faith 
or  by  magic  as  simply  by  his  works.  The  wicked 
sojourned,  temporarily,  in  hell,  if,  taking  their 
lives  through,  the  sum  total  of  their  acts  had  on 
the  whole  put  Satan  to  the  good.  Thus  the  fol¬ 
lowers  of  Zarathushtra’  made  their  religion  as 
nearly  pure  morality  as  organized  religions  ever 
are. 

So  far  as  religions  of  this  type  are  social,  the 
goodness  of  the  individual  is  thought  to  advance 
also  the  welfare  of  the  community,  as  certain 
of  the  Rabbis  taught  that  a  single  Sabbath  per¬ 
fectly  observed  would  bring  in  the  reign  of  Mes¬ 
siah.  In  general,  however,  the  good  man  stands 
on  his  own  feet;  and  he  looks  to  receiving  mani¬ 
fold  more  in  this  present  life  as  part  of  his  re¬ 
ward.  “  If  I  went  into  a  community  with  only  one 
church,”  says  the  author  of  “Religion  and  Busi¬ 
ness,”  “  and  found  that  church  made  up  of  only 
the  poor  people  of  the  community,  I  would  say 
that  its  religion  was  no  good.  .  .  .  The  real  test 
of  a  religion  is  whether  its  followers  are  healthy, 
happy,  and  prosperous.” 

Yet,  on  their  higher  levels,  there  are  no  nobler 
faiths  on  earth  than  these  Religions  of  Morality. 
In  such,  for  example,  as  Prophetic  Judaism,  the 
believer  expects  no  personal  reward  in  this  world, 
and  his  goodness  is  no  matter  of  formal  code  or 
simple  enumeration  of  good  acts,  but  a  funda- 

9 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


mental  righteousness  of  heart.  “What  doth  the 
Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to  deal  j ustly ,  and  to  love 
mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God?  ”  — 
while  the  whole  of  Leviticus  and  Deuteronomy 
condenses  to  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  command¬ 
ments  —  which,  strictly  speaking,  are  not  “com¬ 
mandments”  at  all. 

We  commonly  think  of  the  Hebrew  people 
as  having  a  special  genius  for  religion.  Strictly, 
they  really  had  a  special  genius  for  getting  on 
without  religion.  They  were  of  all  their  contem¬ 
poraries  among  the  least  religious,  in  the  sense 
that  they  performed  daily  the  fewest  useless  and 
irrational  acts  because  their  priests  commanded, 
and  held  the  fewest  absurd  opinions  on  theo¬ 
logical  grounds.  The  history  of  the  religion  of 
Israel  is  a  history  of  getting  clear  of  superstitions 
to  which  other  peoples  have  clung. 

By  this  way  of  simplicity,  religions  of  morality 
pass  over  into  religions  of  redemption. 

Actually,  most  of  the  higher  religions  of  the 
world  hang  more  or  less  between  the  two  types. 
Most  religious  persons  are  also  in  that  inter¬ 
mediate  state.  So,  too,  are  most  definitions  of 
religion. 

Nevertheless,  ever  since  men  have  been  set¬ 
ting  down  their  reflections  concerning  the  inner 
life,  there  have  always  been  some  persons  for 
whom  religion  has  nothing  to  do  with  morality, 
in  the  sense  that,  after  they  have  kept  the  law 

io 


WHAT  IS  RELIGION? 


from  their  youth  up,  they  still  lack  the  one  thing 
which  for  them  is  most  important  of  all.  Such 
persons  desire  salvation,  neither  in  the  form  of 
lengthened  days  and  fuller  barns,  nor  as  immor¬ 
tal  life.  The  first  they  can  do  without;  the  sec¬ 
ond  they  can  earn.  Their  ardent  desire  is  to  still 
an  inner  conflict  and  to  attain  to  the  peace  of 
God  which  passeth  all  understanding.  “  Twice- 
born  men”  is  William  James’s  name  for  such. 
St.  Paul  is  the  standard  example. 

To  persons  of  this  sort,  redemption  comes 
by  two  different  paths,  which  have  been  called, 
more  conveniently  than  accurately,  the  way  of 
Buddha  and  the  way  of  Christ. 

The  one  brings  inner  peace  as  the  reward  of  a 
stern  and  lifelong  self-discipline  of  the  will.  This 
is  the  way  of  the  Stoic.  It  is  also  the  way  of  the 
Puritan,  who,  for  all  his  open  Bible,  was  quite  as 
much  philosopher  as  Christian.  No  better  men 
have  ever  walked  the  earth  than  the  products  of 
this  method.  But  the  gate  is  strait  and  the  way 
long ;  and  the  men  who  have  passed  through  owe 
too  much  to  fortunate  accidents  of  nature  ever 
to  make  their  example  popular. 

The  other  way  makes  salvation  a  free  gift,  and 
always  a  good  deal  of  a  miracle.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  of  course,  none  of  the  religions  of  redemp¬ 
tion  have  any  monopoly  of  either  approach  to 
Nirvana.  Islam  brings  men  to  paradise  by  way 
of  a  formula  —  provided  the  true  believer  has 

II 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


also  made  his  prayers  and  pilgrimages,  done  his 
works  of  mercy,  died  in  battle  with  the  infidel  or 
defending  his  property  against  robbers.  By  all 
objective  tests,  Amida  Buddha  justifies  by  faith; 
while  only  the  cruder  sort  of  Christian  expects 
to  get  through  the  world  without  mortifying  the 
flesh.  So,  in  the  end,  all  redemptive  religions 
are  basally  alike.  They  all  have  for  their  final 
objective  peace  rather  than  righteousness;  but 
they  all,  in  the  end,  involve  both. 

There  are,  then,  to  our  original  question, 
What  is  religion?  four  different  answers. 

Religion  is  a  set  of  devices  for  altering  the 
course  of  nature.  It  is  a  contract  between  cor¬ 
porate  society  and  God.  It  is  a  set  of  categorical 
imperatives  which  the  will  of  God  imposes  upon 
individual  men  and  sanctions  by  rewards  and 
punishments.  It  is  a  conversion  of  the  inner 
nature,  accompanied  by  disappearance  of  the 
state  of  sinfulness,  and  without  overmuch  con¬ 
cern  for  specific  moral  acts.  The  four  different 
meanings  shade  into  one  another.  Most  actual 
religions  include  something  of  each.  Yet  the  four 
are  so  far  different  that  no  one  definition  of  re¬ 
ligion  will  cover  them  all. 

Two  of  these  meanings  concern  bygone  faiths 
which,  in  large  part,  survive  their  utility.  The 
other  two  involve  conceptions  that  are  still  vital. 
Present-day  religion  among  civilized  men  is 
“  morality  touched  with  emotion  ” ;  and  it  is  also 

12 


WHAT  IS  RELIGION? 


something  that  has  “  nothing  to  do  with  mo¬ 
rality.”  The  wise  will  not  say  “religion”  with¬ 
out  taking  thought  which  of  these  they  mean. 

Nevertheless,  after  all  that  historian  and  psy¬ 
chologist  and  dictionary-maker  can  say,  religion 
always,  at  its  best,  at  the  same  time  includes 
morality  and  transcends  it.  The  best  of  men  have 
always  been  both  moralists  and  mystics. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  THREE  PARTS  OF  A  RELIGION 

We  may,  nevertheless,  come  at  this  whole  ques¬ 
tion  of  the  meaning  of  religion  from  a  somewhat 
different  point  of  view. 

Each  of  us,  as  he  runs  through  the  sequences 
of  his  daily  acts,  is,  by  turns,  several  different 
kinds  of  person.  We  rise  in  the  morning,  sleepy 
and  hungry  animals,  to  be  washed  and  fed.  An 
hour  later,  we  become  “the  economic  man,” 
interested  ultimately  in  the  production  of  con¬ 
sumers  ’  goods,  concerned  for  the  rest  of  the  work¬ 
ing  day  with  the  creation  or  distribution  of 
wealth.  Or  it  may  be  that  some  time  during  office 
hours  we  switch  our  minds  entirely  off  our  own 
affairs,  and  sit  with  a  committee  that  is  in  charge 
of  some  public  or  political  or  philanthropic  work. 
Now,  for  the  moment,  we  are  neither  hungry 
animals  nor  economic  men,  but  citizens  con¬ 
cerned  for  the  welfare  of  the  State.  Men  do,  on 
occasion,  forget  sleep  and  food  and  property  and 
kindred,  to  serve  their  country  alone.  Then, 
perhaps,  still  later  in  the  day,  the  producer  and 
the  citizen  undergoes  still  another  metapsychosis 
and  becomes  sportsman,  artist,  naturalist,  par¬ 
ent,  husband,  or  friend. 

14 


THE  THREE  PARTS  OF  A  RELIGION 


In  some  such  wise  as  this,  we  cut  our  lives 
into  pieces.  We  do  one  thing  at  a  time.  We  are 
one  person  at  a  time,  correspondingly.  But 
underneath  all  these  various  momentary  selves 
lies  the  basal  unity.  Whenever  we  stop  to  think, 
all  these  various  aspects  of  our  existences  drop 
into  their  places  in  the  general  plan,  so  that  see¬ 
ing  our  lives  steadily,  we  see  them  whole.  Thus 
we  become  philosophers. 

In  precisely  similar  fashion,  the  moment  we 
cease  reacting  to  the  separate  aspects  of  our  en¬ 
vironment  and  begin  to  adjust  ourselves  to  the 
universe  as  a  whole,  we  become  thereby  religious. 
Religion,  then,  implies  a  unity  of  soul.  We  walk 
by  faith  whenever  we  consider  each  separate  act, 
as  our  elders  expressed  it,  sub  specie  ceternitatis . 

Now  these  two  conceptions  of  religion,  as 
morality  touched  with  emotion,  and  as  the  deeds 
of  the  moment  seen  under  the  aspect  of  eternity, 
are  at  bottom  the  same.  If  we  serve  the  Lord 
with  gladness,  the  serving  the  Lord  is  one  side, 
the  gladness  is  the  other. 

“Who  sweeps  a  room  as  for  Thy  laws 
Makes  that  and  the  action  fine.” 

In  addition,  the  sweeper  proves  himself  religious. 
The  irreligious  person  thinks  only  of  getting  the 
room  clean,  and  loses  correspondingly  some  part 
of  the  joy  of  his  labor. 

Yet,  while  this  vision  of  the  daily  chores  sub 
specie  ceternitatis  seems  to  be  a  nearly  universal 

15 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


experience,  it  comes,  alas,  with  any  sort  of  vivid¬ 
ness  and  authority,  to  only  a  few  gifted  souls, 
who  thereby  become,  in  these  relations,  the  nat¬ 
ural  leaders  of  their  fellows.  The  rest  of  us  so 
clutter  up  our  lives  with  small  matters  done  for 
immediate  ends  that  we  have  to  be  reminded, 
at  least  once  a  week,  that  there  are  larger  con¬ 
cerns.  Inevitably,  therefore,  this  occasional  in¬ 
sight  of  ordinary  men  gets  itself  accumulated 
and  expressed  in  institutions.  Thus,  out  of  re¬ 
ligion,  arise  religions. 

But,  although  the  actual  religions  of  the  earth 
are  as  diverse  as  the  men  who  make  them,  each 
separate  one  of  them,  always  and  everywhere, 
has  in  it  three  elements.  These  are,  a  ritual,  a 
body  of  doctrine,  and  a  rule  of  conduct.  Ritual 
includes,  not  only  the  church  or  temple  service, 
but  the  entire  outward  setting  of  the  cult  —  ar¬ 
chitecture,  holy  seasons,  priesthood,  organiza¬ 
tion.  The  body  of  doctrine  involves,  along  with 
the  formulated  dogmas,  all  the  wide  fringe  of 
tradition,  presupposition,  and  folk-lore  which 
goes  with  it.  The  moral  code  includes,  also,  cus¬ 
tom,  taboo,  and  unwritten  law. 

The  occurrence  simultaneously  of  all  three 
elements  becomes  a  convenient  test  of  what  is 
or  is  not  a  religion. 

Socialism,  for  example,  is  sometimes  spoken  of 
as  a  religion.  In  practical  conduct  the  more 
thoroughgoing  of  socialists  certainly  differ,  some- 

16. 


THE  THREE  PARTS  OF  A  RELIGION 


times  inconveniently,  from  non-socialists.  Their 
dogmas  are  formulated,  and  enforced,  with  a 
rigidity  that  a  pope  might  envy.  But  socialism 
has  no  ritual.  Therefore,  socialism  is  not  a  re¬ 
ligion. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  the  numerous 
secret  societies.  Most  of  them  have  an  elaborate, 
if  commonplace,  ritual.  The  conduct  of  their 
members,  at  least  toward  one  another,  does  differ 
describably  from  that  of  outsiders.  But  they 
have  no  special  body  of  opinion  to  mark  them  off 
from  other  men. 

By  the  same  test,  the  attempt  of  certain 
learned  but  unimaginative  persons,  late  in  the 
last  century,  to  found  a  “religion  of  science” 
was  foredoomed  from  the  start.  Scientific  men 
have  a  code  of  professional  ethics,  which,  in  em¬ 
phasis  at  least,  is  as  much  their  own  as  are  the 
moral  laws  of  several  distinct  religions,  and  there 
is,  besides,  “the  scientific  spirit,  with  its  courage 
and  serenity,  its  disciplined  conscience,  its  in¬ 
tellectual  morality,  its  habitual  response  to  any 
disclosure  of  the  truth.”  The  total  body  of  sci¬ 
entific  doctrine  now  surpasses,  probably  many 
times  over,  that  of  all  the  religions  of  the  world 
combined.  But  science,  qua  science,  can  never 
develop  a  ritual.  Therefore  can  there  never  be 
any  Religion  of  Science. 

Yet,  though  the  differences  among  the  actual 
religions  of  the  world  involve  all  the  three  ele- 

17 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


merits,  code  and  ritual  and  dogma,  the  differ¬ 
ences  in  the  essentials  of  the  moral  law,  among 
the  higher  religions  at  least,  turn  out  to  be  sur¬ 
prisingly  small.  Each  one,  high  or  low,  lays 
down  pretty  explicitly  what  is  or  is  not  “  right.” 
Nearly  all,  in  addition,  proclaim  their  rules  to  be 
the  will  of  God,  to  be  transgressed  at  one’s  peril. 
But  human  nature  is  everywhere  so  much  the 
same,  and  human  experiences  are  everywhere  so 
much  alike,  that,  in  spite  of  certain  differences 
of  ideal,  the  ordinary  “good”  man  of  any  one  of 
the  higher  faiths  is,  for  all  practical  purposes, 
about  like  the  good  man  of  any  other.  In  India, 
for  example,  where  even  the  athletics  are  or¬ 
ganized  on  religious  lines,  the  cricketers  and 
polo  players  from  the  Parsi,  Mohammedan,  Hin¬ 
doo,  and  British  universities  all  alike  conform  to 
the  by  no  means  unexacting  ethics  of  sport,  and 
all  are  equally  “gentlemen.”  The  Chinese  stu¬ 
dents  in  American  schools  are  like  other  college 
boys.  We  still  admire  Socrates  and  read  Epic¬ 
tetus.  And  since  . 

“We  needs  must  love  the  highest  when  we  see  it,’'  • 

if  there  were  no  other  element  in  religion  than 
morality,  we  should  be  but  a  short  way  from  one 
world-wide  “religion  of  all  good  men.” 

Rituals,  also,  though  different  in  appearance, 
are  curiously  alike.  They  all  involve  the  same 
sacrifices  and  offerings,  the  same  fastings  and 

18 


THE  THREE  PARTS  OF  A  RELIGION 


ceremonial  meals,  the  same  sacramental  wash¬ 
ings  and  baptisms,  processions,  vigils,  incense, 
dim  religious  light.  The  forms  may  be  vastly 
elaborated,  as  in  the  older  branches  of  the 
Christian  Church.  They  may  be  reduced  to 
the  barest  remnant,  as  among  the  Society  of 
Friends.  But  whatever  occurs  at  all  is  about 
the  same,  the  world  over.  After  everything  is 
said,  ritual  remains  an  art  —  and  art  is  one, 
everywhere. 

So  the  early  Roman  Catholic  missionaries  to 
Tibet,  encountering  the  high-church  Buddhists 
of  the  Greater  Vehicle,  believed  the  Devil  to  be 
caricaturing  their  own  high  mass.  What  Protes¬ 
tant,  entering  into  the  synagogue  on  the  Sab¬ 
bath  day,  feels  the  service  strange?  Men  do  find 
their  deepest  impulses  to  be  weak  and  evanes¬ 
cent.  They  do  find  that  certain  forms  of  worship, 
certain  types  of  architecture,  certain  recurrent 
holy  days,  do  help  them  to  recall  their  minds 
from  temporary  concerns  to  eternal.  And  since 
all  good  men  are,  at  bottom,  pretty  much  alike, 
the  rituals  that  help  to  hold  them  to  their  duty 
are  alike  also. 

The  differences  lie,  of  course,  in  the  interpre¬ 
tation  of  the  ritual;  so  that  the  same  act  may 
have  a  quite  different  meaning  even  within  the 
limits  of  the  same  faith.  Thus,  for  example, 
baptism  is  for  certain  Christians  a  cleansing 
from  sin.  For  certain  others,  it  typifies  death  and 

19 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


resurrection.  For  J ohn  the  Baptizer  preaching  in 
the  wilderness  of  J udea,  there  seems  to  have  been 
an  additional  meaning  that  is  now  completely 
lost.  But  the  taurobolium,  for  all  its  difference 
of  form,  had  precisely  the  meanings  of  our  fa¬ 
miliar  rite. 

Obviously,  however,  for  such  of  us  as  have 
outgrown  a  belief  in  magic,  the  efficiency  of  any 
ritual  is  solely  a  question  of  habit  and  association. 
One  gets  good  out  of  any  to  which  he  has  been 
brought  up.  The  wise  man,  therefore,  will  train 
himself  to  all,  interpreting  each  in  accord  with 
his  own  momentary  need.  He  should  be  willing, 
with  mental  reservations,  to  “worship  Mumbo 
Jumbo  in  the  Mountains  of  the  Moon,”  if  fate 
chanced  to  take  him  to  that  far-off  district,  and 
there  was  nothing  other  to  be  had.  For  any  man 
to  object  to  one  form  of  religious  observance,  for 
no  better  reason  than  because  he  happened  to  be 
born  into  contact  with  another,  is  about  as  ra¬ 
tional  as  to  turn  one’s  back  on  the  Taj  Mahal, 
on  the  ground  that  he  has  been  living  across  the 
street  from  a  cemetery.  The  moralities  of  reli¬ 
gions,  and  their  aids  to  emotion,  are  alike  beyond 
argument. 

Matters  of  doctrine,  on  the  other  hand,  are  in 
quite  a  different  case.  The  higher  life,  as  others 
before  Goethe  no  doubt  remarked,  is  concerned 
with  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good.  On 
goodness  and  beauty,  as  expressed  in  moral 

20 


THE  THREE  PARTS  OF  A  RELIGION 


code  and  ritual,  all  men  are  in  large  measure 
agreed.  But  truth  is  various. 

Moreover,  each  of  us,  in  a  very  real  sense, 
makes  his  own  theology.  The  form,  to  be  sure, 
is  set  for  us  by  the  established  faith  into  which 
we  chance  to  be  born;  so  that  we  are  Chris¬ 
tian,  Jew,  Buddhist,  Confucian,  or  Latter  Day 
Saint,  as  befits  our  special  longitude  east  or 
west  of  Suez.  All  such  labels,  however,  have  to 
do  with  only  the  externals  and  the  accidents 
of  our  opinions.  Their  content,  their  inner  and 
personal  significance,  we  build  up  for  ourselves, 
bit  by  bit,  out  of  the  total  experience  of  our 
lives. 

For  most  normal  people  this  process  of  con¬ 
structing  a  set  of  articles  of  faith  continues 
throughout  our  years.  We  read  our  daily  chap¬ 
ter  in  the  New  Testament  or  the  Old,  in  Science 
and  Health  or  the  Bhagavad  Gita;  and  we  slowly 
correlate  revelation  with  experience.  Old  puzzles 
resolve  themselves  in  the  light  of  new  informa¬ 
tion.  We  attack  old  difficulties  from  new  angles. 
Certain  riddles,  we  discover,  simply  have  no 
answers;  and  they  cease  to  trouble  us.  Certain 
problems  we  discover  to  be  merely  verbal,  the 
solution  being  that  there  is  no  problem  there. 
Patiently,  with  the  passage  of  years,  the  wise 
man  knits  together  his  theoretic  knowledge  and 
his  practical  experience  into  a  working  faith. 
Just  as,  according  to  the  proverb,  one  is,  at  forty, 

21 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


“either  a  fool  or  a  physician,”  so  is  he,  at  forty, 
either  a  fool  or  a  philosopher. 

Moreover,  as  things  are  now  in  this  country, 
even  the  form  of  one’s  belief  is  not  determined 
altogether  by  accident  of  birth.  Granted  that 
of  the  nearly  two  hundred  and  seventy  warring 
sects  of  Christendom,  nine  tenths  are,  for  most 
of  us,  practically  negligible,  a  score  or  so  remain 
to  be  reckoned  with.  There  are,  besides,  a  half¬ 
score  of  newer  sects,  with  their  variants.  Few 
men  or  women,  probably,  go  through  life  with¬ 
out  having  to  make  up  their  minds,  more  or  less 
finally,  with  which  of  several  somewhat  diverse 
bodies  their  own  views  are  in  closest  accord. 
Many  persons,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  do  change. 

In  “truth,”  then,  rather  than  in  beauty  or 
goodness,  lie  the  differences  between  different 
religions,  and  the  diversities  among  different 
religious  men.  And  since  all  cannot  be  right,  in 
doctrine,  not  in  ritual  or  law,  is  the  weak  spot 
both  of  personal  faith  and  organized  cult.  Rit¬ 
uals  may  be  crude.  Moral  codes  may  be  in¬ 
adequate.  But  only  dogmas  are  demonstrably 
wrong. 

The  problem  thus  offered  is  nowadays  a  seri¬ 
ous  one.  For  any  religion,  public  or  private,  to 
be  accepted  as  completely  “true,”  it  ought  to 
have  all  its  doctrines  in  precise  agreement  with 
all  the  soundest  secular  opinion  of  its  day.  This 
has  occurred  at  various  times  in  the  past.  It  was 

22 


THE  THREE  PARTS  OF  A  RELIGION 


the  case  throughout  most  of  Old  Testament 
history.  It  was  the  case  in  Christian  Europe  in 
the  i27o’s.  But  it  was  not  at  all  the  case  in  Rome 
in  the  Age  of  Augustus;  and  it  is  not  universally 
the  case  in  these  United  States  of  America  in  this 
year  of  grace. 

For  a  religion,  by  its  very  nature,  is  conserv¬ 
ative.  Its  truths  of  faith  tend  to  preserve  forms 
of  words  which  the  learned  world  has  abandoned. 
The  God  who  is  the  object  of  its  worship  tends 
to  be  the  kind  of  being  who  would  have  created 
the  universe  known  to  the  science  of  the  past. 
It  tends  to  interpret  its  sacred  books  in  the  way 
that  other  books  were  interpreted  years  before. 
A  ritual  easily  takes  on  new  meaning,  and  is  all 
the  better  for  its  age.  Moral  codes  have  proved 
curiously  elastic.  But  a  formulated  dogma  is 
fixed  in  an  eternal  state.  The  more  rapid  the 
progress  of  knowledge,  the  more  difficult  becomes 
the  continuous  readjustment.  In  the  end,  old 
religions  break  down  and  new  ones  take  their 
place  when  this  adaptation  finally  becomes  im¬ 
possible.  It  was  not  the  Christian  apostle,  but 
the  Alexandrian  astronomer,  that  ended  the 
ancient  Roman  cult. 

The  wise  man,  therefore,  will  see  to  it,  early 
in  life,  that  he  holds  all  truth  as  he  sees  it  in 
such  fashion  that,  with  each  fresh  advance  in 
knowledge,  he  will  have  no  cause  to  balk  or  to 
compromise,  but  may  accept,  heartily  and  gladly, 

23 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


any  new  light  from  any  source.  It  must  needs  be 
that  changes  come;  but  the  test  of  a  sound  opin¬ 
ion  is  precisely  its  elasticity,  as  Newton’s  teach¬ 
ing,  based  on  the  motions  of  the  moon,  held  also 
for  Uranus  and  the  dark  companion  of  Algol,  of 
which  Sir  Isaac  never  knew.  All  the  fundamen¬ 
tal  doctrines  of  natural  science  have  made  fish 
of  whatever  came  to  their  net,  and  grown  by 
what  they  feed  on.  Why  should  it  be  different 
with  fundamental  doctrines  in  any  field?  We 
can  never  have  a  religion  of  science:  we  may, 
whenever  we  will,  have  a  scientific  religion. 


CHAPTER  III 

RELIGION  AND  WORLD-VIEW 

The  Germans  have  a  word,  Weltanschauung , 
which  of  late  years  we  have  begun  to  take  over 
into  English,  having  ourselves  no  precise  equiv¬ 
alent,  yet  needing  the  idea.  1 1  World-view  ’  ’  is  the 
nearest  we  can  come  —  meaning  one’s  entire 
general  conception  of  the  universe,  as  a  whole 
and  also  in  its  parts,  as  all  hangs  together 
into  one  consistent  scheme.  A  world-view  in¬ 
volves,  therefore,  matter  and  souls,  angels  and 
gods  and  devils,  planets  and  stars,  animals  and 
human  nature,  the  beginning  of  everything  and 
its  end,  together  with  the  relations  and  the  mean¬ 
ing  of  them  all.  It  is,  in  short,  a  man’s  way  of 
conceiving  the  whole  of  things  as  they  are. 

Each  of  us,  therefore,  has  more  or  less  his 
own  personal  world-view.  Differences  of  opinion 
between  men  are  commonly,  at  bottom,  not 
really  concerned  with  the  particular  point  at 
issue;  but  involve  the  entire  substratum  of  prej¬ 
udice  and  presupposition,  of  ways  of  envisaging 
evidence,  of  ideas  as  to  what  is  or  is  not  possible. 
The  wisdom  of  each  disputant  seems  foolishness 
to  the  other,  because  neither  can  fit  the  other’s 
contention  into  his  own  world.  So 

25 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


“  East  is  east,  and  west  is  west, 

And  never  the  twain  shall  meet.” 

Unfortunately  for  us  all,  such  differences  of 
Weltanschauung  are  most  conspicuous  in  the 
sphere  of  religion. 

All  the  men  who  made  our  historic  creeds, 
most  of  those  who  wrote  our  best  hymns,  many 
who  fixed  the  forms  of  our  rituals,  had  a  world- 
outlook  altogether  different  from  our  own.  Cal¬ 
vin  and  Luther,  for  example,  both  believed  in  a 
flat  earth;  and  Calvin  seems  to  have  clung  to 
that  opinion  even  after  Magellan’s  voyage.  Lu¬ 
ther  called  Copernicus  “upstart  astrologer”  and 
“fool.”  Milton,  in  the  eighth  book  of  “Para¬ 
dise  Lost,”  though  he  knew  Galileo  personally, 
cannot  bring  himself  to  “El  pur  se  muove .” 
Wesley,  born  sixteen  years  after  the  “  Principia,” 
opined  that  “Mr.  Newton’s  theories  tend  to 
infidelity.”  Even  now,  every  short  while,  the 
Monday  morning  newspapers  report  some  cler¬ 
gyman’s  animadversions  on  “Darwinism.” 

Ultimately,  most  of  our  formal  theology  goes 
back  to  Augustine  and  325  a.d.  It  took  shape, 
therefore,  in  a  dying  world,  where  a  great  civi¬ 
lization  was  running  down  from  good  to  bad  and 
from  bad  to  worse,  until  the  night  of  the  Dark 
Ages  closed  over  Europe.  Our  creeds,  therefore, 
our  hymns,  our  church  services,  our  entire  re¬ 
ligious  vocabulary,  reflect  the  world-view  of 
men  who,  so  far  from  being  able  to  discover  new 

26 


RELIGION  AND  WORLD-VIEW 


truth,  could  not  so  much  as  hold  on  to  the  old 
which  the  past  had  given  them,  and  who  were 
bringing  back  to  plague  mankind  every  sort  of 
superstition  which  Greek  science  had  held  at 
bay.  Naturally,  then,  some  of  their  opinions  do 
not  altogether  fit  a  time  when,  in  certain  fields, 
we  make  more  progress  in  twenty  years  than  our 
forbears  made  in  twenty  centuries. 

Six  days  in  the  week  we  live  in  an  ordered 
world.  On  the  seventh,  we  open  the  church  door 
on  a  land  of  topsy-turvy,  where  axes  float,  dry 
sticks  change  to  serpents,  cities  are  let  down  out 
of  the  sky,  angels  stir  the  water  of  wells,  bedeviled 
swine  run  violently  into  the  sea.  We  say  prayers 
for  rain  an  hour  after  we  have  consulted  a  gov¬ 
ernment  bulletin  to  see  whether  we  shall  need  an 
umbrella  before  we  get  home.  We  solemnly 
repeat,  “ .  .  .  Maker  of  heaven  and  earth  .  .  .  de¬ 
scended  into  Hell  .  .  .  sitteth  on  the  right  hand 
of  God  .  .  .”  Yet  all  the  while  we  know  perfectly 
well  that  heaven  is  not  “up”  nor  hell  “down,” 
that  this  universe  was  never  ‘  ‘  made  ’  ’  by  anybody 
in  any  such  sense  as  the  “apostles”  supposed, 
nor  has  it  any  such  topographical  relations  as 
they  assumed.  Whoso  has  sat  with  his  eye  at 
one  end  of  a  brass  tube  and  a  fragment  of  the 
everlasting  mystery  at  the  other,  knows  that  no 
living  being,  from  pond  scum  to  mammal,  ever 
gets  into  this  unintelligible  world  by  virtue  of  any 
process  that  in  the  least  resembles  anything 

2  7 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 

that  the  days  of  ignorance  meant  by  “  concep- 
tus  ” ;  while  as  for  “carnis  resurrectionem ,”  which, 
as  a  piece  of  psychophysics,  we  inherit  from  the 
followers  of  Zarathushtra  by  way  of  the  Phari¬ 
sees  and  St.  Paul,  most  of  us  actually  do  hold 
the  diametrically  opposite  opinion  —  the  Pla¬ 
tonic  doctrine  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 

One  need  not  dwell  on  the  incongruous  lan¬ 
guage  of  our  hymns.  “While  with  ceaseless 
course  the  sun”;  “Sing  choirs  of  angels”;  “The 
Lamb  upon  the  throne”; 

“Casting  down  their  golden  crowns 
Around  the  glassy  sea. 

Cherubim  and  Seraphim 
Falling  down  before  Thee.” 

Who  would  guess,  listening  to  many  prayers, 
that  the  Being  to  whom  they  are  addressed  is  sup¬ 
posed  also  to  be  responsible  for  the  sixty  thou¬ 
sand  great  stars  of  that  dim  cluster  in  Hercules? 

We  can  write  good  war  poetry  without  mention¬ 
ing  shields  and  spears.  We  can  talk  about  books 
and  architecture  and  music  and  the  rest  of  the 
things  of  the  spirit  in  an  accurate,  critical,  mod¬ 
ern  vocabulary.  But  we  do  not  seem  to  be  able 
to  sing  hymns  or  to  say  prayers  or  to  define  dog¬ 
mas  without  dragging  in  the  world-view  of  peo¬ 
ple  who  looked  to  a  king’s  touch  to  cure  skin 
disease  and  rang  a  church  bell  to  frighten  off  a 
comet.  The  inevitable  result  is  “the  seeming 
unreality  of  the  spiritual  life.” 

28 


RELIGION  AND  WORLD-VIEW 


One  lesson  the  war  taught  us:  the  difference 
between  a  regiment  of  Mohammedans,  dropping 
down  in  their  places  at  the  hour  of  prayer,  every 
man  with  his  face  toward  Mecca  and  his  forehead 
on  the  ground,  and  a  regiment  of  Christians, 
using  the  forms  of  their  faith  only  as  the  basis 
of  their  profanity.  The  one  has  no  universal 
education  or  popular  press.  Therefore,  it  keeps 
the  Weltanschauung  of  the  Koran,  and  believes  its 
religion.  The  other,  having  both,  tries  vainly  to 
be  at  the  same  time  in  two  worlds.  The  practical 
result  is  that  this  United  States  of  America,  in  this 
year  of  grace,  is  probably  the  most  irreligious 
nation  that  has  ever  had  a  place  on  the  earth. 

And  yet,  obviously,  we  cannot  very  well  re¬ 
write  all  our  hymns  and  re-edit  all  our  service 
books  every  time  somebody  synthesizes  a  new 
carbon  compound.  This  has,  in  away,  been  tried. 
Some  of  the  more  aberrant  denominations,  in 
addition  to  composing  new  spiritual  songs  to 
embody  their  doctrines,  have  tried  revising  the 
old  ones  to  the  same  end.  The  result  is  sorry 
doggerel  in  place  of  good  poetry.  After  all, 
“ Mesopotamia”  really  is  a  “blessed  word.” 
Practically,  for  us,  there  is  no  moving  men’s 
hearts  to  righteousness  by  any  other  form  of 
words  than  those  which  uplifted  Israel.  That 
much  is  fixed  for  us  in  all  matters  of  ritual. 

Creeds  need  not  be  in  the  same  case.  There  is 
just  now,  a  marked  trend,  on  the  part  of  those 

29 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION  * 


bodies  which  are  least  limited  by  tradition, 
toward  a  continual  restating  of  their  doctrines 
as  their  own  Weltanschauung  moves  another  step 
away  from  that  of  their  founders.  Unfor¬ 
tunately,  the  practical  result  of  this  process  is 
to  make  each  successive  formulary  just  a  little 
vaguer  than  the  one  before  it,  until,  in  certain 
instances,  no  mortal  man  can  attach  any  precise 
meaning  whatever  to  the  words. 

Such,  clearly,  is  not  the  way  out.  If  we  are  to 
make  vain  repetitions  as  the  heathen  do  —  and 
there  is,  really,  not  a  little  to  be  said  for  this 
time-honored  method  —  we  had  much  better 
repeat  time-honored  words.  Much  of  the  value 
of  forms  of  any  sort  lies  precisely  in  their  sug¬ 
gestion  of  our  own  dependence  on  the  past.  It 
is  good  in  times  of  joy,  for  us  rampant  indi¬ 
vidualists  to  recall  how  many  other  men,  pagans 
many  of  them  in  German  forests,  have  also  re¬ 
peated,  '‘with  this  ring,  I  thee  wed”;  and  how 
many  ancient  worshipers  of  heathen  gods  have 
looked  to  the  same  touch  of  water  to  make  their 
children  better  men  than  they.  There  is  no 
greater  comfort  in  bereavement  than  to  feel  how 
many  other  men  and  women  have  listened  to  the 
same  burial  service,  and  taken  heart  again  at  the 
same  assurance.  The  religion  that  shows  us  our 
daily  acts  sub  specie  ceternitatis  should  also  show 
us  our  place  in  history. 

Shall  we,  then,  continue  to  mumble  the  same 

30 


RELIGION  AND  WORLD-VIEW 


old  words,  letting  it  be  understood,  not  too  pub¬ 
licly,  that  we  know  neither  what  they  meant  to 
everybody  once,  nor  what  they  mean  to  our¬ 
selves  now,  leaving  it  to  our  children  to  discover 
for  themselves  that  what  we  say  in  church  be¬ 
longs  with  Santa  Claus  and  the  stork?  It  has 
been  done.  Men  have,  in  fact,  gone  even  farther 
on  the  same  road.  The  Parsis  of  India,  up  to  the 
time  of  their  great  awakening  in  the  middle  of 
the  last  century,  had,  for  a  thousand  years,  been 
chanting  passages  from  the  Gathas,  in  a  tongue 
of  which  no  living  man  understood  so  much  as  a 
single  sentence.  Apparently,  they  received  their 
reward,  for  they  have  been  called  the  most 
moral  community  in  the  world.  We,  also,  can 
do  likewise  if  we  will.  We  can  take  our  formulas 
as  vague  figures  of  speech,  affirming  our  accept¬ 
ance  of  them  in  some  sense  or  other,  yet  never 
deciding  either  what  that  sense  is,  or  why  we  do 
not  take  them  literally  as  they  stand.  More¬ 
over,  we  can  continue  to  take  the  clause  on  one 
side  of  a  comma  as  literal  history,  properly  doc¬ 
umented  ;  and  the  clause  on  the  other  side  of  the 
same  comma  as  a  “ spiritual  truth”  to  which 
everybody  is  at  liberty  to  attach  any  meaning 
he  likes,  or  no  meaning  at  all.  But  to  do  these 
things  is  to  take  all  rationality  out  of  our  faith. 
Furthermore,  it  is  also  the  way  to  court  intellec¬ 
tual  bankruptcy. 

With  things  as  they  are,  therefore,  nowadays, 

31 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


there  is  only  one  course  open  to  a  reasonable 
man.  That  is  to  take,  bit  by  bit,  all  the  dogmas 
of  his  church,  all  the  articles  of  his  private  faith, 
and  so  many  passages  as  interest  him  out  of 
hymn  and  scripture,  and  to  say  of  each:  “To  the 
man  who  wrote  this,  it  meant  precisely  so-and- 
so.  I  do,  or  I  do  not  believe  it  in  this  sense.” 

An  unknown  Jew,  for  example,  wrote,  “The 
Lord  is  my  Shepherd  .  .  Obviously,  he  did 
not  mean  to  be  taken  literally,  as  having  wool  on 
his  back  and  sleeping  out  on  the  grass.  Whoever 
wrote  the  twenty-third  psalm  knew  that  he  was 
writing  poetry;  and  as  poetry  he  expected  to  be 
read.  We  may,  therefore,  read  that  passage  as 
poetry,  with  whatever  poetic  imagination  it  has 
pleased  Providence  to  bless  us.  But  that  other 
unknown  Jew  who  wrote  the  account  of  the 
shadow  on  the  sundial  of  Ahaz,  which  “returned 
backward  ten  steps  ...  on  the  dial  whereon  it 
was  gone  down,”  thought  he  was  writing  literal 
history.  He  meant  his  account  to  be  taken  as  it 
stands;  and  he  was  writing  nonsense.  It  was,  to 
be  sure,  not  nonsense  to  him;  because  his  world¬ 
view  included  a  flat  earth,  with  a  sun,  the  size  of 
a  tent,  carried  across  the  under  surface  of  a 
solid  sky.  For  him,  there  was  no  reason  why  the 
sun  should  not  move  east  as  easily  as  west.  So 
long,  then,  as  we  see  this  story,  in  its  own  setting, 
as  part  of  a  consistent  Weltanschauung,  we  may 
do  what  else^  we  like  with  it,  and  extract  any 

32 


RELIGION  AND  WORLD-VIEW 


moral  that  we  can.  But  we  must  not  take  it  out 
of  its  place,  and  try,  by  any  process  of  rational¬ 
ization,  to  fit  it  into  the  Copernican  astronomy. 
Along  that  way  lies  all  confusion. 

So  with  any  article  of  any  historic  creed  or  any 
ancient  teaching  of  any  church.  We  can  never 
know  too  completely  why  men  of  other  days 
thought  as  they  did,  nor  too  accurately  what  it 
was  they  thought.  We  shall  come  to  no  harm  by 
conducting  our  present-day  worship  or  by  talk¬ 
ing  about  our  present-day  faith  in  terms  of  the 
science  of  a  bygone  time,  any  more  than  by 
building  our  churches  in  a  style  that  men  once 
used  also  for  houses  and  barns,  so  long  as  we 
understand  frankly  that  we  are  using  obsolete 
forms.  Religion  takes  on  the  unreality  of  the 
discarded  science  only  when  we  forget  that  the 
science  is  discarded  and  try  to  piece  together  the 
old  garment  and  the  new  cloth.  We  may  rightly 
say  all  the  old  words  in  honor  of  the  old  saints  — • 
provided  only  that  we  always  understand  pre¬ 
cisely  what  the  ancient  worthies  meant,  and 
precisely  what  we  mean,  and  precisely  why  the 
two  are  or  are  not  the  same.  The  danger  lies  in 
muddle-headed  pretense  of  factitious  agreement. 

On  the  other  hand,  whatever  is  anywhere  per¬ 
manently  true  ought  to  be  capable  of  statement 
in  terms  of  the  Weltanschauung  of  any  time  and 
place.  This,  we  sometimes  forget,  includes  our 
own.  We  have  to  live  in  a  world  where  axe  heads 

33 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


do  not  float,  angels  do  not  trouble  the  water, 
and  the  sun  is  a  million  times  larger  than  the 
earth.  Only  in  terms  of  this  world  can  we,  in 
the  end,  think  profitably  about  anything. 

We  must,  then,  as  things  are,  master  two 
languages.  One,  the  language  of  hymn  and  Bible 
and  creed,  is  for  edification  and  worship.  The 
other,  the  language  of  our  own  day,  is  for  making 
out  what  we  really  think.  We  ought  to  handle 
either  language  freely;  and  we  ought,  besides,  to 
have  a  sort  of  historical  grammar  of  our  religious 
tongue,  so  that  we  can  tell,  at  least  in  a  general 
way,  to  what  particular  historic  world-view  each 
form  of  words  belongs.  But  we  ought  not  to  talk 
a  religious  pidgin  English. 

Doubtless,  in  the  course  of  time  history  will 
again  repeat  itself.  A  new  prophet  will  arise  who 
will  restate  once  more  the  ancient  truths  —  this 
time,  in  terms  of  a  universe  that  is  a  thousand 
light  years  across  and  a  thousand  million  years  in 
age.  Then  will  new  poets  write  us  new  hymns, 
new  priests  devise  new  rituals,  and  new  theolo¬ 
gians  formulate  new  creeds.  We  shall  think  we 
have  a  new  religion,  and  prepare  for  persecution 
at  the  hands  of  persons  who  think  they  still  be¬ 
lieve  the  old  one. 

Meanwhile,  we  must  not  forget  that  religions 
are  always  practical  affairs.  They  begin  as 
specific  taboos  and  special  magics  for  getting 
crops  to  grow,  walls  to  stand,  and  enemies  to 

34 


RELIGION  AND  WORLD-VIEW 


run  away.  They  end  by  getting  men  happily  and 
efficiently  through  their  day’s  work.  What 
counts,  then,  as  Arnold  said,  is  the  emotional  ex¬ 
perience  and  the  moral  ideal.  The  form  of  doc¬ 
trine  is  a  good  deal  incidental,  a  reflection  of  the 
special  Weltanschauung  of  some  prophet  of  the 
past,  whose  insight  into  a  timeless  reality  has 
preserved  some  fossilized  opinion  of  his  day. 
Doubtless,  some  men  will  long  continue  to  refuse 
to  worship  under  the  same  roof  with  other  men 
whose  world-view  dates  a  century  or  two  earlier 
or  later  than  their  own.  But  the  fashion  of  the 
time  is  all  the  other  way;  and  we  expect  most 
opinions  to  be  obsolescent  from  their  birth.  So 
the  main  thing  nowadays  is  to  keep  clear  of 
“that  nebulous  country  where  words  take  the 
place  of  ideas,”  and  to  remember  always  that 
“Truth  proceedeth  rather  out  of  error  than 
out  of  confusion.”* 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  ASTRONOMY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

In  the  beginning  God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth. 
And  the  earth  was  waste  and  void;  and  darkness 
was  upon  the  face  of  the  deep;  and  the  spirit  of  God 
moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters.  ...  And  God  said, 
Let  there  be  a  firmament  in  the  midst  of  the  waters,  and 
let  it  divide  the  waters  from  the  waters.  And  God  made 
the  firmament,  and  divided  the  waters  which  were  under 
the  firmament  from  the  waters  which  were  above  the  fir¬ 
mament. 

In  the  six  hundredth  year  of  Noah's  life,  in  the  second 
month,  on  the  seventeenth  day  of  the  month  .  .  .  were  all 
the  fountains  of  the  great  deep  broken  up,  and  the  win¬ 
dows  of  heaven  were  opened.  And  the  rain  was  upon  the 
earth  forty  days  and  forty  nights.  ...  And  God  remem¬ 
bered  Noah  ....  and  the  waters  were  assuaged;  the  foun¬ 
tains  also  of  the  deep  and  the  windows  of  heaven  were 
stopped,  and  the  rain  from  heaven  was  restrained. 

I  knew  a  man  in  Christ,  fourteen  years  ago  {whether 
in  the  body,  I  know  not;  or  whether  out  of  the  body,  I 
know  not;  God  knoweth),  such  a  one  caught  up  even  to 
the  third  heaven.  And  I  knew  such  a  man  .  .  .  how  that 
he  was  caught  up  into  Paradise.  .  .  . 

As  we  comprehend  no  man’s  religion  until  we 

36 


THE  ASTRONOMY  OF  THE  BIBLE 


know  his  world-view,  so  we  understand  no  man’s 
world-view  till  we  discover  his  astronomy.  The 
earth  itself  is  for  each  of  us  the  stage  on  which 
he  sets  his  opinions.  The  sun  and  the  planets  and 
the  stars  are  the  background  against  which  his 
drama  of  history  is  played.  These  give  him  his 
scale,  both  in  space  and  in  time;  and  fix  for  him 
the  limits  of  what  may  or  may  not  occur.  Even 
his  god  is  always  just  that  sort  of  divinity  who 
will  account  for  the  visible  universe  as  he  con¬ 
ceives  it  to  be. 

Most  unfortunately  for  us  just  now,  there  are 
at  least  three  different  and  mutually  incompat¬ 
ible  astronomies  with  which  we  have  to  reckon, 
and  among  which  we  have  to  change  back 
and  forth  as  we  attend  to  this  interest  or 
that.  Our  sacred  book  sets  forth  one  order  of  na¬ 
ture.  Our  traditional  theology  presupposes  an¬ 
other.  Our  school  geographies  teach  still  a  third. 

The  first  of  these  supposes  the  entire  material 
universe  to  be  about  the  size  of  the  actual  moon, 
with  the  moon  itself  just  beyond  the  clouds,  and 
the  sun  “as  large  as  the  Peloponnesus.”  The 
second  puts  the  entire  visible  creation  inside  the 
known  orbit  of  Mercury,  and  makes  the  distance 
of  the  moon  from  the  earth,  when  correctly 
measured,  to  be  one  of  the  long  dimensions  of 
interstellar  space.  The  third  does  its  thinxing  in 
terms  of  a  galaxy  that  is  thousands  of  light  years 
across  the  shortest  way  and  at  least  ten  times  as 

37 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


far  the  other ;  that  contains  three  hundred  million 
stars  actually  visible,  several  of  them  of  such  a 
size  that  a  body  one  thousandth  part  as  large 
would  still  be  a  thousand  times  larger  than  the 
sun ;  that  relates  the  known  distance  of  the  moon 
to  the  known  distance  of  the  nearest  fixed  star  as 
an  inch  to  a  thousand  miles.  Naturally,  it  makes 
no  small  difference  to  any  man’s  religious  opin¬ 
ions  in  which  of  these  three  universes  he  thinks 
of  himself  as  dwelling. 

Names  for  these  three  cosmologies  are  not 
to  be  had  that  will  imply  nothing  and  say  all. 
Biblical,  Christian,  and  modern,  are  convenient 
terms.  Jerusalem,  Rome  (mediaeval  Rome,  that 
is),  and  Alexandria  suggest  another  set  that  has 
the  merit  of  being  colorless. 

The  Biblical  astronomy  is,  of  course,  very 
much  older  than  any  portion  of  the  Bible.  It  is, 
in  fact,  substantially  the  original  conception  of 
the  mundus  which  arises  always,  everywhere, 
and  among  all  men,  before  they  have  become 
critical. 

Pre-scientific  man  built  his  universe  on  com¬ 
mon  sense.  The  earth  is,  obviously,  flat  and 
very  large.  Obviously,  too,  this  flat  surface  is,  in 
a  general  way,  circular,  with  the  observer’s  own 
native  land  somewhere  near  the  middle.  To 
those  ancient  peoples  who  most  concern  us,  it 
was  about  equally  obvious  that,  since  travelers 
in  most  directions  in  which  travel  was  profitable 

38 


THE  ASTRONOMY  OF  THE  BIBLE 


came  by  and  by  to  salt  water,  the  entire  circle  of 
the  lands  must  be  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  the 
stream  of  ocean.  Somewhere  beyond  the  ocean 
lie  the  mountains  or  the  pillars  or  the  unknown 


MAP  OF  THE  WORLD  BY  HECAT7EUS  (5 1 7  B.C.) 


lands  which  support  the  sky.  On  this  much  are 
agreed  all  those  ancient  peoples  whose  pupils  we 
are.  For  them,  all  parts  of  the  universe  lay 
within  a  thousand  miles  of  Suez. 

39 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


As  for  the  sky,  this  obviously  is  a  solid  firma¬ 
ment  or  vault,  blue  and  star-studded  on  the 
under  side,  resting  on  the  earth  at  the  horizon. 
The  sun  “as  a  bridegroom  coming  out  of  his 
chamber,”  the  moon  and  planets  commonly, 
sometimes  also  the  stars,  are  thought  to  enter 
the  sky  by  doors  in  the  east,  pass  across  the  fir¬ 
mament  by  their  own  will  if  they  are  gods,  or  be 
carried  by  angels  if  they  are  not,  and  to  leave  at 
night  by  other  doors  in  the  west.  They  may  all 
return  again  to  the  east  during  the  night;  or  the 
stars  may  be  scrapped  each  morning  and  a  new 
lot  be  created.  Often,  in  countries  far  enough 
from  the  equator  for  the  pole  to  be  well  up  in  the 
sky,  all  the  heavenly  bodies  pass  either  by  day 
or  by  night  behind  the  great  “Mountain  of  the 
North”  on  which  was  the  Babylonian  Garden 
of  Eden.  Somewhere  beyond  the  horizon,  pre¬ 
sumably  outside  the  firmament,  are  the  store¬ 
houses  of  the  winds,  commonly  four  in  number. 
High  overhead,  yet  not  so  high  that  men  may 
not  hope  to  climb  by  way  of  a  tower,  are  “the 
waters  that  are  above  the  firmament,”  like  a 
great  tank,  and  “the  treasuries  of  the  hail.” 
When  “the  windows  of  heaven  are  opened,” 
rain  or  snow  falls  upon  the  earth. 

Such,  in  general,  is  the  universe  which  is  so 
eloquently  described  in  Job,  the  creation  of 
which  is  so  vividly  set  forth  in  Genesis.  The 
same  general  conception  is  everywhere  pre- 

40  . 


THE  PRIMITIVE  COSMOS 

Above,  the  Almighty,  seated  on  the  concave  firmament,  is  creating  light. 
Below  is  the  flat  surface  of  the  Great  Deep  with  the  Spirit  of  God  moving 
upon  the  face  of  the  waters. 

From  the  Junian  manuscript  (probably  tenth  century)  of  Caedmon’s  seventh- 
century  Anglo-Saxon  epic  “The  Fall  of  Man.” 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


supposed  throughout  all  the  Biblical  books,  even 
in  the  New  Testament.  It  persisted,  side  by 
side  with  the  “Ptolemaic”  or  Roman  cosmol¬ 
ogy,  all  down  through  the  Christian  centuries, 
until  Magellan,  after  1519,  finally  wiped  it  off 
the  scientific  map.  In  general,  the  Protestant 
clergy,  because  of  their  dependence  on  the  letter 
of  the  Scripture,  maintained  this  Biblical  view 
against  the  Roman  Catholics,  who  trusted  to 
Aristotle.  It  is  held  even  now  more  widely  than 
most  persons  realize.  There  are  still  in  these 
United  States  schools  in  which  a  teacher  of  geog¬ 
raphy  has  to  use  no  small  tact  in  expounding 
“the  globular  hypothesis.”  At  last  accounts 
the  Massachusetts  Zetetic  Society,  with  head¬ 
quarters  in  Boston,  was  printing  tracts  to  con¬ 
vert  the  world  back  to  its  ancient  faith. 

Our  own  great  interest,  however,  must  always 
be  in  the  special  form  of  the  primitive  flat-earth 
doctrine  which  developed  in  lower  Mesopotamia, 
passed  with  some  alterations  to  the  early  He¬ 
brews,  was  still  further  modified  by  contact  with 
Persia,  prevailed  throughout  the  Jewish  world, 
and  still  has  to  be  explained  out  of  our  own 
sacred  text. 

The  Asian  of  the  southwest  set  himself  this 
problem:  When  Marduk  or  Ahura  Mazda  or 
Javeh  Elohim,  or  whatever  other  god  it  was  who 
first  shaped  the  present  world  out  of  original 
chaos,  did  he  start  with  a  chaos  of  dry  land  and 

42 


THE  ASTRONOMY  OF  THE  BIBLE 


add  the  water,  or  did  he  start  with  a  chaos  of 
water  and  add  the  land?  The  ancient  Iranians, 
living  on  a  dry  upland,  put  the  land  first.  But 
for  dwellers  near  the  head  of  the  Persian  Gulf, 
who  could  see  with  their  own  eyes,  year  by  year, 
the  great  delta  of  the  Tigris-Euphrates  building 
out  into  the  sea,  the  question  had  only  one 
answer.  Creation  starts  with  “  the  great  waters,” 
‘‘without  form  and  void.”  The  dry  land  appears 
only  after  a  portion  of  this  ancient  sea  has  been 
divided  off  to  become  “the  waters  that  are  above 
the  firmament.”  Still  might  the  coast-dweller 
observe  for  himself  more  of  the  dry  land  appear¬ 
ing  from  out  the  waters  of  the  great  deep,  of 
which  the  Gulf  is  a  part,  a  hundred  miles  of  new 
country  during  historic  times. 

But  Mesopotamia  is  arid,  with  a  desert  on 
each  side,  fertile  only  when  irrigated.  Its  ten 
inches  of  rain  a  year  are  quite  insufficient  to  ac¬ 
count  for  its  two  great  rivers.  Moreover,  since 
“all  the  rivers  run  into  the  sea,  yet  the  sea  is  not 
full,”  there  is  no  other  conclusion  possible  for 
pre-scientific  man  in  a  dry  climate  except  that 
“  unto  the  place  whence  they  come,  thither  they 
return  again,”  by  way  of  underground  passages. 
Thus  the  waters  of  the  great  deep  flow  back  to 
lakes  and  ponds  and  springs,  which  in  their  turn 
feed  the  rivers.  The  waters  which  are  under  the 
earth  are,  however,  not  so  much  local  channels 
as  a  vast  cistern  underlying  all  the  fertile  lands, 

43 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


a  portion  of  the  waters  of  the  great  deep,  which 
the  fountains  of  the  great  deep  bring  to  the  sur¬ 
face  of  the  earth. 

In  terms  of  this  geography,  therefore,  all  that 
was  necessary  to  produce  the  great  deluge  was  to 
open  the  windows  of  heaven  and  let  down  the 
waters  above  the  firmament,  and  to  break  up  the 
fountains  of  the  great  deep  to  let  out  the  sub¬ 
terranean  supply.  The  same  general  conception 
persisted  into  the  Middle  Ages.  Albertus  Mag¬ 
nus,  who  died  in  1280,  and  Thomas  Aquinas, 
who  was  his  contemporary,  both  held  that  the 
larger  rivers  at  least  are  supplied  directly  from 
the  ocean,  underground. 

Somewhere  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth  — 
whether  above  or  below  the  waters  of  the  great 
deep  is  commonly  not  clear  —  lies  the  country 
of  the  dead.  Primitively,  for  the  most  part,  the 
dead  go  to  heaven.  But,  oddly  enough,  both  the 
Jews  and  the  Greeks,  the  two  peoples  to  whom 
we  owe  most,  seem  to  have  made  the  shift  to 
an  underground  country  of  the  dead  shortly 
before  they  appear  in  history.  Paradise  in  the 
sky  is,  therefore,  both  primitive  and  Christian; 
though  there  are  all  sorts  of  variants,  so  that 
the  Greenlanders,  not  perhaps  without  reason, 
tuck  heaven  cozily  underground  and  put  hell 
aloft  where  the  wind  blows. 

Originally,  both  Hades  and  Sheol  are  ail  alike. 
1  ‘The  dead  praise  not  the  Lord,  neither  any  that 

44 


THE  ASTRONOMY  OF  THE  BIBLE 


go  down  into  silence.”  “ There  is  one  fate  to  the 
righteous  and  to  the  wicked.”  But  with  the  rise 
of  self-conscious  individualism  and  the  religions 
of  morality,  men  began  to  look  to  the  future  for 


SCHIAPARELLI’S  INTERPRETATION  OF  OLD 
TESTAMENT  COSMOLOGY 


rewards  for  themselves  and  punishment  for 
others;  so  that  the  underworld  tended  to  differ¬ 
entiate  itself  into  Tartarus  and  Elysian  Fields. 
Dives,  in  the  parable,  “  died  and  was  buried,”  and 
kept  on  downward  into  the  pit  at  the  bottom 
of  Sheol.  But  Lazarus,  “carried  by  the  angels 
into  Abraham’s  bosom,”  is  in  the  upper  and 
pleasanter  portion  of  Sheol,  though  within  sight 
and  speaking  distance  of  the  bottom.  In  later 

45 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


portions  of  the  New  Testament,  however,  the 
shift  has  been  made  back  to  paradise  in  the  sky. 

But  the  Jews  as  we  meet  them  in  history  do 
not  live  on  the  flood  plain  of  Mesopotamia,  but 
in  a  hill  country,  a  land  of  little  rivers  and  of 
rain.  In  such  a  region,  the  sky  is  not  so  obviously 
brass,  “like  a  molten  mirror,”  and  the  rain  is 
evidently  from  the  clouds.  The  Babylonian 
world-view,  therefore,  while  it  remains  as  a  pious 
tradition,  is  modified,  not  only  in  its  theology  — 
greatly  to  its  advantage  —  but  in  its  more  veri¬ 
fiable  aspects  as  well. 

Thus,  for  example,  in  the  ancient  document 
which  scholars  separate  out  from  the  rest  of  the 
Hexateuch  and  call  J,  the  background  of  which 
is  southern  Palestine,  the  flood  story  —  in  Gen¬ 
esis  7: 1-5,  this  is  the  version  that  has  the  seven 
pairs  of  each  sort  of  animal  in  the  ark  —  has  no 
mention  of  the  fountains  of  the  great  deep.  The 
flood  waters  come  from  the  sky  only.  Moreover, 
J,  which  furnishes  the  second  of  the  creation 
stories  —  the  one  in  Genesis  2  in  which  the  cre¬ 
ation  occupies  one  day  only  —  adjusts  most  in¬ 
geniously  the  discrepant  climates  of  the  land  of 
Marduk  and  the  land  of  Javeh  Elohim,  making 
the  transition  in  time,  as  it  was  not,  instead  of  in 
space,  as  it  actually  was.  “For  the  Lord  God 
had  not  caused  it  to  rain  on  the  earth  .  .  .  but 
there  went  forth  [probably  a  fountain  of  the 
great  deep,  originally]  and  watered  the  whole 

46 


THE  ASTRONOMY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

face  of  the  ground.  .  .  .  And  a  river  went  out  of 
Eden  to  water  the  garden  .  .  .  and  became  four 
heads.  .  .  .  And  the  fourth  river  is  Euphrates.” 
Curiously  enough,  taking  the  narrative  as  it 
stands,  the  first  rain  on  the  new-created  world 
was  that  which  caused  the  great  flood. 

More  important  than  this,  as  the  primitive 
arid-country  account  altered  under  a  rainy  sky, 
is  the  change  in  the  character  of  the  firmament. 
This,  from  an  opaque  “inverted  bowl,”  thins  out 
to  a  curtain  that  is  more  or  less  transparent. 
The  stars  recede  beyond  the  sky  and  shine 
through.  The  waters  that  are  above  the  firma¬ 
ment  persist  only  as  a  sop  to  tradition.  The 
clouds  themselves  tend  to  form  the  floor  of 
heaven. 

With  the  firmament  worn  thin  and  no  longer 
starry,  the  way  is  open  for  an  increase  in  the 
number  of  heavens  and  elaboration  of  their  de¬ 
tails,  under  the  influence,  apparently,  of  a  devel¬ 
oping  scientific  interest  in  the  planets.  St.  Paul, 
following  his  contemporaries,  who  in  turn  bor¬ 
rowed  from  Persia,  seems  to  have  distinguished 
three  heavens.  Seven  has  always  been  a  favorite 
number,  as  still,  for  example,  among  Moham¬ 
medans.  Dante  and  Milton  come  just  under 
the  dozen.  According  to  Irenseus,  Basilides  had 
365  in  his  cosmos.  But  no  matter  what  the  num¬ 
ber,  one  of  the  set  is  commonly  identified  with 
the  original  firmament. 

47 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 

When  the  lowest  heaven  is  at  the  level  of  the 
clouds,  as  commonly  in  the  New  Testament 
narrative,  it  lies,  of  course,  only  just  above  the 
tops  of  the  higher  hills.  Whenever,  therefore,  the 
sky  is  torn  asunder,  men  behold  the  Almighty 
sitting  on  his  throne,  or  hear  his  voice  in  the  air. 
Saints  and  angels  slip  back  and  forth  between 
heaven  and  earth  on  all  sorts  of  errands.  A  great 
sheet  knit  at  the  four  corners,  or  a  greater  heav¬ 
enly  city,  can  be  let  down  through  the  roof  of  the 
world.  Nevertheless,  the  future  abode  of  com¬ 
mon  mortals  tends  to  remain  underground.  The 
various  heavens  are  reserved  for  the  gods,  the 
angels,  and  a  few  favored  mortals  —  Elijah, 
Moses,  Messiah,  the  emperors.  In  fact,  one  of 
the  great  problems  of  religion,  about  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  the  Christian  era,  was  how,  with  the 
rising  of  democracy,  to  get  the  ordinary  man 
after  death  into  the  sky.  On  this  essentially 
astronomical  matter  hang  all  the  mystery  re¬ 
ligions. 

A  variant  of  this  old  flat-earth  geography 
came  out  of  Egypt  —  along  with  a  good  deal  of 
important  theology.  Since  the  sky  is  only  the 
Goddess  Nut  on  her  hands  and  knees;  the  earth 
must  needs  be  twice  as  long  one  way  as  the  other 
—  whence  our  ‘‘latitude”  and  “longitude”  — 
with  a  mountain  at  each  corner  to  hold  up  the 
floor  of  heaven.  So  the  universe  is  more  box  than 
bowl;  though  still,  of  course,  three-storied,  since 

48 


THE  THREE-STORIED  UNIVERSE  OF  ANCIENT  TIMES  AND 

THE  EARLY  MIDDLE  AGES 

The  Glory-King  of  Hosts,  with  his  faithful  angels,  stands  on  the  floor  of 
heaven,  above  the  stars.  Rebel  spirits  fall  through  the  air  into  the 
mouth  of  hell. 

"  And  all  henceforth  to  demons  were  transformed 
And  doomed  triumphless  to  the  swart  Abyss.” 

Hell,  conceived,  as  usually,  as  a  monster,  connects  interestingly  with  Jonah's 
“whale”  —  “Out  of  the  belly  of  Sheol  cried  I”  —  and  with  Leviathan,  the 
swift  serpent,  who  devours  the  sun  and  moon  at  eclipses. 

From  the  Junian  manuscript  (probably  tenth  century)  of  Caedmon’s  seventh- 
century  Anglo-Saxon  epic  “The  Fall  of  Man.”  , 


THE  ASTRONOMY  OF  THE  BIBLE 


hell,  as  usual,  has  a  floor,  and  heaven  a  roof.  But 
the  waters  under  the  earth  and  the  waters  above 
the  firmament  have  become  only  a  pious  con¬ 
vention. 

This  general  conception  of  a  rectangular  uni¬ 
verse,  longest  from  east  to  west,  fitted,  much 
better  than  the  Biblical  “bowl  theory,”  what  was 
actually  known  after  Alexander’s  time  concern¬ 
ing  the  countries  of  the  earth.  It  became,  there¬ 
fore,  the  favorite  form  of  the  flat-earth  doctrine 
down  through  the  Middle  Ages  until  the  time  of 
Columbus  and  Magellan,  Cosmas  Indicopleustes, 
an  Egyptian  monk  of  the  sixth  century,  being 
chief  authority  for  the  details.  Nevertheless,  by 
the  end  of  the  eighth  century,  both  flat-earth 
astronomies  had  so  far  dropped  out  of  sight  that 
Dante,  writing  about  1300,  shows  no  trace  of 
either.  Milton,  on  the  other  hand,  reverts;  and 
the  real  heroine  of  “Paradise  Lost”  is  the  God¬ 
dess  Nut. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  COSMOLOGY  OF  THE  CREEDS 

The  Roman,  Christian,  Alphonsine,  or  “  Ptole¬ 
maic”  astronomy  begins,  as  much  as  with  any 
one,  with  Pythagoras,  shortly  before  500  b.c. 

The  Greeks,  as  a  whole,  had  no  great  turn 
for  common  sense.  Therefore,  because  the  earth 
looks  like  a  flat  disk,  they  straightway  took  to 
speculating  whether,  after  all,  it  may  not  be 
some  other  shape  —  square,  cylindrical,  possibly 
even  round.  The  Greeks  were  not  really  any¬ 
thing  like  so  scientific  as  we  sometimes  make 
them  out  to  be ;  but  once  clear  of  the  common- 
sense  presupposition  that  the  earth  is  flat,  it  is 
only  a  short  step  for  anybody  to  the  proof  that 
the  figure  actually  is  a  sphere.  Even  before 
Plato’s  day,  therefore,  the  true  shape  of  the 
earth  had  become  a  commonplace  of  Greek 
science;  and  by  the  first  century  B.c.,  its  size  also 
was  known,  with  an  accuracy  not  surpassed  until 
1617.  From  Aristotle  on,  scientific  Greek  astron¬ 
omy  is  substantially  our  own  modern  system. 

There  remained,  nevertheless,  one  very  funda¬ 
mental  problem  —  the  distances  of  the  various 
heavenly  bodies.  Most  primitive  astronomies 
put  sun,  moon,  stars,  and  planets  about  equally 

5i 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


far  from  the  earth.  At  the  most,  the  fixed  stars 
only  are  a  little  beyond  the  rest. 

The  Greeks,  as  usual,  perceiving  that  all  the 
host  of  heaven  looks  to  be  in  about  the  same 
region,  straightway  assumed  that  their  distances 
must  be  very  unlike;  and  attempted  forthwith 
to  find  what  these  distances  are.  By  the  second 
century  b.c.,  at  the  Alexandrian  Observatory 
they  had  located  the  moon  with  an  error  of  only 
half  of  one  per  cent,  and  had  measured  its  diam¬ 
eter  to  within  about  two  hundred  miles  of  the 
correct  value.  This  gave,  then,  some  idea  of  the 
scale  of  the  universe,  which  they  made  out  to  be 
at  least  a  half-million  miles  from  side  to  side. 
The  planets  were  proved  to  be  somewhere  be¬ 
yond  the  moon,  but  resisted  all  attempts  to  place 
them  accurately.  Aristarchus,  who  was  on  the 
observatory  staff  at  that  time,  got  himself 
frowned  upon  for  arguing  that  the  stars  may  be 
many  times  more  than  ten  million  miles  away. 
In  general,  the  universe  looked  several  thousand 
times  farther  across  in  Egypt  than  in  Judea. 

The  Pythagoreans,  however,  were  philoso¬ 
phers,  not  scientists.  They  philosophized  a 
“central  fire”  for  the  earth  to  revolve  about, 
and  a  “counter  earth”  that  hid  this  fire  from 
the  antipodes.  In  addition,  they  evolved  from 
their  inner  consciousnesses  the  famous  “crystal 
spheres,”  each  carrying  one  or  other  of  the 
seven  planets  in  its  orbit,  except  the  eighth 

52 


THE  COSMOLOGY  OF  THE  CREEDS 


and  outermost,  which  held  all  the  fixed  stars  and 
was  the  limit  of  creation.  All  three  together, 
as  they  moved,  ground  out  “the  music  of  the 
spheres.” 

How  this  extraordinary  Pythagorean  system 
ever  came  to  be  called  “Ptolemaic”  is  one  of  the 
ironies  of  history;  for  Ptolemy  himself  held  no 
such  opinion,  and  what  he  did  think  was  quite 
incompatible  with  anything  in  the  least  like 
it.  “Ptolemaic,”  nevertheless,  it  became,  and 
“Ptolemaic”  it  remains  to  this  day. 
f  The  Middle  Ages  made  two  changes.  Al* 
phonso  X,  who  was  an  astronomer,  added  an¬ 
other  sphere  outside  that  which  carries  the 
fixed  stars,  to  account  for  the  precession  of  the 
equinoxes,  and  still  another,  the  tenth,  outside 
this,  the  primum  mobile ,  to  account  for  day  and 
night.  The  theologians,  in  addition,  made  each 
crystal  sphere  the  floor  of  a  separate  heaven,  and 
put  the  heaven  of  heavens,  the  empyrean,  the 
special  dwelling-place  of  God,  outside  them  all. 
Thus  the  successive  heavens,  eleven  in  number, 
surround  the  earth  and  each  other  on  all  sides, 
with  the  heaven  of  the  moon  farthest  inside  the 
ball.  There  still  survive,  however,  certain  ves¬ 
tiges  of  the  older  flat  earth.  Giant  heads  blow 
the  winds  from  the  four  corners  of  the  map.  The 
empyrean  is  skewed  off  center  with  the  rest  of 
the  heavens,  to  retain  the  absolute  direction  for 
up  and  down.. 


53 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


Needless  to  say,  the  inhabitants  of  these  va¬ 
rious  spheres  —  principalities,  powers,  thrones, 
archangels,  saints,  the  persons  of  the  trinity  — 
are  all  as  accurately  located  in  their  several 
heavens  as  the  inhabitants  of  a  modern  city  on 
their  proper  streets.  We  shall  never  again  know 
as  much  about  the  universe  as  men  knew  then. 

Such,  substantially,  is  the  world-view  of  those 
theologians  and  fathers  of  the  church  who  did 
not  refuse  altogether  to  believe  that  the  world  is 
round.  This  is  the  astronomy  of  Augustine,  of 
Albertus  Magnus,  of  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  in 
general  of  the  more  enlightened  clergy  of  the 
Roman  Church  after  the  eighth  Christian  cen¬ 
tury.  Dante  knows  no  other.  Milton  combines 
this  with  the  Biblical  theory;  but  is  half  minded 
to  turn  Copernican,  a  century  after  Copernicus 
had  gone  to  his  grave.  Cotton  Mather’s  conver¬ 
sion  to  the  doctrine  of  a  moving  earth,  about 
1720,  marks,  in  a  general  way,  the  end  of  schol¬ 
arly  support  for  the  Christian  theory  in  America. 

Dante’s  system  is  essentially  that  of  any  of  his 
educated  countrymen  three  hundred  years  either 
side  of  his  time.  He  puts  his  heavens  in  the  Al- 
phonsine  spheres  and  in  the  space  beyond.  His 
earth  is  fixed  at  the  center  of  the  universe,  and, 
although  spherical,  is  inhabited  on  only  one  side, 
Jerusalem  being  at  the  middle  point.  On  the 
backside  of  the  earth  is  the  Mount  of  Purgatory, 
nine  stages  along  its  sides,  the  terrestrial  para- 

54 


dante’s  UNIVERSE,  1300 

Adapted  from  S.  H.  Gurteen’s  Epic  of  the  Fall  of  Man. 


THE  COSMOLOGY  OF  THE  CREEDS 


dise  at  its  top  just  touching  the  heaven  of  the 
moon,  so  that  the  purified  spirit  may  pass  on 
conveniently  to  its  reward. 

Hell  lies,  also  conveniently,  on  the  inhabited 
side  of  the  earth,  a  vast  crater,  four  thousand 
miles  across,  thinly  roofed  by  the  earth’s  crust, 
the  hole  made  where  Satan  struck  when  he  was 
hurled  from  the  empyrean.  This  conical  under¬ 
world,  nine  circles  around  its  sides,  has  its  nar¬ 
row  tip  just  at  the  earth’s  center. 

In  brief,  then,  for  Dante  and  contemporary 
churchmen,  hell  is  inside  the  earth,  as  for  Greek 
and  Jew;  the  heavens,  including  the  highest  of 
all,  surround  the  earth  on  all  sides;  paradise  is 
beyond  the  moon.  There  are  virtually  no  Bibli¬ 
cal  elements  in  the  cosmology. 

Milton  compromised.  “Paradise  Lost”  re¬ 
peats  the  old  Biblical-Egyptian  doctrine  with 
its  three-storied  arrangement,  though  the  uni¬ 
verse,  for  Milton,  has  grown  to  almost  Alexan¬ 
drian  dimensions.  But  the  space  between  the 
roof  of  hell  and  the  floor  of  heaven  is  not  the 
habitable  earth  and  the  air  above  it.  The  earth 
itself,  surrounded  by  the  ten  crystal  spheres  of 
the  Alphonsine  system,  hangs  suspended  in  the 
midst  of  chaos,  Jerusalem  up,  by  gold  chains 
from  the  floor  of  the  empyrean. 

Thus,  for  Milton,  the  highest  heaven,  unlike 
the  rest  does  not  surround  the  earth;  hell,  older 
than  the  earth,  is  below,  not  inside,  it;  and  there 

56 


milton’s  universe,  1667-1674 

Adapted  from  Gurteen. 


THE  COSMOLOGY  OF  THE  CREEDS 


is  no  purgatory.  There  is  reason  for  think¬ 
ing  that  this  entire  scheme,  so  far  from  being 
original  with  Milton,  is  to  be  traced  back, 
substantially  unmodified,  as  far  as  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  Caedmon  of  the  seventh  century.  “Para¬ 
dise  Lost”  is,  to  be  sure,  poetry;  but  it  reflects 
what  men  did  once  really  believe.  It  reflects 
also  the  Weltanschauung  of  the  men  who  largely 
made  for  us  our  Protestant  theology. 

The  long  battle  between  the  Roman  astron¬ 
omy  and  the  older  Alexandrian,  which  Coperni¬ 
cus  revived  after  1540  and  Galileo,  Kepler,  and 
Newton  argued  out,  is  too  familiar  to  need  sum¬ 
mary.  We  miss,  however,  most  of  the  point  of  it 
all,  unless  we  bear  in  mind  that  science  won  its 
battle  largely  with  theological  weapons. 

“  In  Adam’s  fall 
We  sinned  all,” 

and  the  resulting  corruption  involves  the  whole 
of  nature  as  far  out  as  the  sphere  of  the  moon. 
Beyond  this  and  including  the  moon  itself,  s 

“Die  unbegreiflich  hohen  Werke 

Sind  herrlich ,  wie  am  ersten  Tag . 

The  floor  of  the  lowest  heaven  is  the  boundary 
between  nature  and  the  supernatural.  Every¬ 
thing  in  the  celestial  realm  is  perfect  and  un¬ 
changing. 

The  Copernicans,  therefore,  being  quite  un¬ 
able  to  prove  directly  that  the  earth  moves, 
and  being,  in  fact,  for  some  seventy  years  after 

58 


THE  COSMOLOGY  OF  THE  CREEDS 

Copernicus’s  death,  equally  unable  to  reconcile 
their  theory  with  the  observed  behavior  of  the 
planets,  concentrated  their  attack  on  proving 
changes  and  imperfection  in  the  wrong  place. 
Tycho  Brahe,  already  wakened  from  his  dog¬ 
matic  slumbers  by  the  remarkable  temporary 
star  of  1572,  was  able  to  show  that  the  great 
comet  of  1577  lay  beyond  the  moon,  because,  un¬ 
like  the  moon,  it  did  not  measure  any  larger 
when  directly  overhead  than  when  low  in  the 
sky,  although  some  four  thousand  miles  nearer. 
So  the  heavens  do  alter;  and  comets  are  not 
caused  “by  the  ascending  from  the  earth  of 
human  sins  and  wickedness,  formed  into  a  kind 
of  gas,  and  ignited  by  the  anger  of  God.”  What 
was  practically  more  important,  they  are  not  to 
be  frightened  off  by  any  ringing  of  church  bells 
or  suppressed  by  papal  bulls. 

“  He  was  a  great  magician,  Tycho  Brahe.” 

After  1610,  Galileo’s  opera  glass  showed 
mountains  on  the  moon,  and  so  proved  that  one 
at  least  of  the  heavenly  bodies  is  not  smooth  and 
perfect.  In  vain  did  the  churchmen  of  the  day 
maintain  that  the  lunar  peaks  are  not  at  the 
moon’s  surface,  but  are  overlain  by  an  invisible 
crust  as  smooth  as  doctrine  demands.  Galileo  re¬ 
torted  with  invisible  mountains  ten  times  higher 
than  the  real  ones!  Very  properly,  under  the  cir¬ 
cumstances,  contemporary  theologians  refused  to 

"59 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


view  the  moon  at  all.  There  are,  of  course,  no 
mountains  there,  else  Aristotle  would  have  men¬ 
tioned  them.  Still,  if  we  did  look,  unquestion¬ 
ably  the  Devil  would  make  us  see  mountains. 
So  why  risk  being  led  into  temptation? 

Finally,  Kepler  proved  that  the  planets  do 
not  move  in  circles  at  all,  but  in  ellipses;  and  the 
whole  system  of  crystal  spheres  came  crashing 
down  about  the  ears  of  saints  and  angels,  greatly, 
no  doubt,  to  their  astonishment. 

All  this  somewhat  lengthy  tale  has  three  very 
practical  results. 

In  the  first  place,  no  man  can  read  the  Bible, 
no  man  can  interpret  any  historic  creed,  to  make 
out  whether  he  believes  it  or  not,  until  he  can 
place  text  or  article  in  its  astronomical  setting. 
‘‘For  in  him,”  for  example,  says  St.  Paul,  “dwell- 
eth  all  the  fulness  of  the  godhead  bodily.”  But 
the  “fulness,”  the  “pleroma,”  is  the  region  above 
the  planetary  heavens,  substantially  Milton’s 
empyrean,  where  dwells  the  Unknowable  God, 
ministered  to  by  seven  or  eighteen  or  some 
other  number  of  his  personified  attributes  — 
Wisdom,  Reason,  Life,  Thought,  Righteousness, 
Peace,  Truth,  and  the  rest.  Not  to  know  this  is 
to  miss  much  of  the  apostle’s  point.  So,  too,  for 
another  example,  with  the  last  half  of  the  Apos¬ 
tles’  Creed.  It  presupposes  the  Jerusalem  astron¬ 
omy.  Without  this,  it  has  no  meaning.  Or,  again, 
the  whole  half-religious  pseudo-science  of  as- 

60 


THE  COSMOLOGY  OF  THE  CREEDS 


trology,  out  of  which  even  Kepler  made  a  living, 
and  which  has  still  so  much  following  that  the 
“Atlantic  Monthly”  has  been  carrying  the  ad¬ 
vertisement  of  a  professional  astrologer,  has  no 
point  at  all  unless  the  human  soul,  coming  down 
from  God  at  birth,  passes  through  the  planetary 
heavens,  and  so  picks  up  the  special  qualities  of 
the  beings  who  inhabit  each. 

In  the  second  place,  the  entire  Biblical  story 
and  nine  tenths  of  Christian  history  are  based  on 
a  universe  that  does  not  in  the  least  resemble 
that  in  which  we  actually  live.  The  story  would 
have  been  differently  written,  the  theology  de¬ 
rived  from  it  would  have  taken  a  different 
turn,  the  dogmas  added  to  it  would  have  been  of 
quite  a  different  sort,  if  the  men  who  wrote  out 
the  story  and  thought  out  the  doctrine  had 
known  as  much,  let  us  say,  as  Aristarchus  knew 
before  200  B.c.  Our  traditional  theology  rests  on 
an  astronomy  which  we  have  not  believed  for 
two  hundred  years  and  shall  never  believe 
again.  Therefore,  our  religion  hangs  in  the  air. 
That  is,  in  no  small  part,  what  is  the  matter  with 
us  all. 

And,  finally,  not  only  our  formal  doctrines, 
but  much  of  our  poetry  and  especially  our 
hymns,  much  of  our  art,  much  of  our  prose  lit¬ 
erature,  all  these  portions  of  the  Bible  which  we 
quote  and  read,  everything,  in  short,  which 
gives  the  emotional  color  to  our  religious  ideas, 

61 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


all  fit  a  universe  which  we  do  not  believe  to  exist 
and  which  we  cannot  imagine  in  any  such  vivid 
fashion  as  our  fathers  did.  Who  nowadays  fears 
a  hell  which  is  only  a  metaphor?  How  shall  men 
strive  for  a  heaven  that  is  only  a  figure  of  speech? 
Men  can  see  an  undiscovered  country  with  the 
eye  of  faith  and  order  their  mortal  lives  so  as  to 
find  it,  whether  they  put  this  country  under  the 
earth,  or  in  the  sky,  or  on  the  blessed  isles  some¬ 
where  between  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  west 
coast  of  Ireland.  They  can  also  look  with  hope¬ 
ful  mind  to  a  hereafter  in  a  world  of  pure  ideas 
with  no  local  habitation.  But  they  cannot  do 
both. 


CHAPTER  VI 

1  THE  FOUR  SOURCES  OF  OPINION 

But  how,  after  all,  do  men  find  the  answer  to 
any  question?  How  do  we  make  out,  for  example, 
the  shape  of  the  earth,  or  the  number  of  the 
stars,  or  the  location  of  purgatory,  or  the  date  of 
creation,  or  the  size  of  the  moon,  or  anything 
else  that  we  happen  to  want  to  know?  Practi¬ 
cally,  of  course,  and  immediately,  we  ask  some¬ 
body  else.  Ultimately,  men  have  depended  on 
one  or  other  of  four  different  methods  of  arriving 
at  truth. 

First,  apparently,  both  as  the  reaction  of  the 
individual  to  a  new  situation,  and  historically 
for  the  race  as  a  whole,  comes  the  method  of 
common  sense.  Any  fool  can  see,  we  say  —  and 
go  ahead.  If  the  event  proves  that  the  guess  was 
right,  we  do  the  same  thing  next  time.  If  we 
guessed  wrong,  we  guess  again.  Given  time 
enough,  somebody  will  find  the  answer  to  every 
practical  problem,  and  know  the  answer  to  be 
right  because  it  works. 

“A  burnt  child  dreads  the  fire.”  In  addition, 
the  burnt  child  acquires  certain  information  con¬ 
cerning  heated  bodies  and  flame.  If  enough 
people  carry  through  the  same  experiment,  the 

63 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


results  get  included  in  our  folk-lore  or  assembled 
into  such  documents  as  the  Book  of  Proverbs. 
If  the  matter  is  vital  enough  to  have  survival 
value,  natural  selection  takes  the  matter  in 
hand,  and  builds  the  information  into  the  nerv¬ 
ous  system.  All  knowledge  among  the  lower 
animals  seems  to  be  of  this  sort,  from  the  pro¬ 
tozoa  up.  Either  the  creature  itself  tries  some  act 
at  random,  tries  it  again  if  it  works,  or  tries 
something  else  if  it  does  not,  until  the  habit 
forms;  or  else  whatever  causes  there  are  that  do 
such  things  evolve  an  instinct.  Nine  tenths  of 
our  own  human  knowledge  is  also  of  this  same 
burnt  child  type,  habit  or  instinct  or  tradition, 
built  up  by  the  method  of  trial  and  error. 

A  few  persons,  among  favored  races,  on  a  few 
special  subjects,  and  then,  not  often,  reason. 
When  they  do  reason,  practically  and  historically 
the  reasoning  takes  one  or  other  of  three  forms. 

Given  the  more  or  less  spontaneous  ideas  of 
common  sense,  we  may  analyze  these  systemat¬ 
ically,  criticize  each  in  the  light  of  all  the  rest, 
reject  at  least  one  of  each  contradictory  pair, 
and  thus,  in  the  course  of  time,  develop  a  set 
of  opinions  that  are  internally  self-consistent, 
however  much  they  quarrel  with  the  common- 
sense  aspects  of  the  outer  world  with  which  they 
started.  This  is  the  method  of  philosophy. 
Historically,  it  is  the  first  advance  from  the  pre¬ 
human  ‘‘method  of  fumble  and  succeed.”  The 

64 


OUR  FOUR  SOURCES  OF  OPINION 


Greeks,  of  course,  especially  the  Ionians,  were 
the  first  western  people  who  really  did  anything 
noteworthy  with  this  method  of  transcending 
experience. 

Or,  again,  we  may  take  the  data  of  common- 
sense  experience,  and  criticize  this  in  the  light 
of  other  experience  of  the  same  sort.  We  shall 
speculate  as  freely  as  any  philosopher;  but  we 
shall  check  our  speculations,  not  by  inner  con¬ 
sistency,  but  by  outward  fact.  We  shall,  in  such 
case,  hunt  after  facts  which  do  not  come  of 
themselves;  and  when  we  can,  we  shall  experi¬ 
ment.  This  is  the  method  of  science.  This  also 
was  an  invention  of  the  Greeks. 

Common  sense,  science,  and  philosophy  are, 
then,  three  different  levels  of  insight  into  the  na¬ 
ture  of  the  universe.  Crude  common  sense  takes 
the  endless  confusion  of  this  buzzing,  booming 
world,  and  sorts  it  out  into  some  workable 
order.  The  device,  therefore,  comes  to  its  limit 
when  it  has  made  the  world  livable.  Science, 
thereupon,  takes  the  assumptions  of  common 
sense  and  criticizes  these  in  the  light  of  more  ac¬ 
curate  and  wider  knowledge.  Science  comes  in  its 
turn  to  its  limit  so  far  as  the  world  becomes  pre¬ 
dictable.  Then,  finally,  philosophy  criticizes  the 
assumptions  of  science,  endeavoring  to  make  the 
world  comprehensible.  Thus  far,  on  the  whole, 
philosophy  has  been  rather  less  successful  than 
its  partners. 


65 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


There  remains,  however,  still  a  fourth  method 
of  acquiring  information,  which  does  not  belong 
anywhere  in  the  common-sense-science-philos¬ 
ophy  series  —  the  method  of  theology.  Theology 
employs  the  same  free  speculation  as  the  other 
three.  It  rejects  its  failures  in  the  same  fashion. 
But  its  test  of  truth  is  neither  workability,  nor 
the  facts  of  nature,  nor  inner  consistency,  but 
conformity  to  some  datum  assumed  as  already 
fixed. 

This  ultimate  authority  is,  of  course,  widely 
diverse  for  different  theologies.  It  may  be  the 
Old  Testament.  It  may  be  the  New  Testament. 
It  may  be  the  Church,  teaching  a  great  deal 
which  is  not  in  either.  It  may  be  the  Koran.  It 
may  be  the  works  of  Aristotle.  But  always  and 
everywhere  the  theological  method  of  discover¬ 
ing  truth  assumes  that  some  one  or  more  persons 
know  something  important  about  the  universe 
which  the  rest  of  mankind  cannot  possibly  dis¬ 
cover  for  themselves. 

One  gets  the  sharpest  idea  of  the  relations 
among  these  four  methods  of  exploring  the  uni¬ 
verse  by  considering  an  actual  case  which,  his¬ 
torically,  has  been  handled  in  succession  by 
them  all. 

Such,  for  example,  is  our  old  problem  of  the 
figure  of  the  earth.  Common  sense,  of  course, 
always  answers  at  once  that  the  earth  is  flat; 
and  proves  its  case  by  the  fact  that  men  do,  on 

66 


OUR  FOUR  SOURCES  OF  OPINION 


that  assumption,  find  their  way  across  country 
and  from  port  to  port.  After  all,  the  earth  really 
is  flat  within  the  probable  error  of  the  original 
data;  and  it  is  not  round  within  the  probable 
error  of  the  data  now  available.  So  we  really  do 
not  now  know  what  shape  it  is.  What  we  do 
know  nowadays  is  science. 

But  the  Greek  philosophers  attacked  the  prob¬ 
lem  from  another  side.  What,  they  asked  them¬ 
selves,  is  the  perfect  figure,  the  ideal  solid?  If 
we  can  decide  on  that,  then  we  shall  know  the 
shape  of  the  earth.  The  perfect  solid,  said  some, 
is  the  cube;  therefore  the  earth  is  a  cube,  and  we 
live  on  the  upper  surface.  Not  so,  responded 
others;  the  ideal  figure  is  the  sphere,  and  the 
earth  is  round.  Thereupon  arose  Anaximander, 
the  Hegel  of  his  day,  and  pointed  out  that,  since 
the  cylinder  combines  the  properties  of  both 
cube  and  sphere,  the  cylinder  is  the  ultimate 
figure,  and  the  inhabited  earth  is  the  upper  sur¬ 
face  of  that  geometrical  solid.  Philosophy,  in 
the  western  world,  was  just  trying  its  wings. 
Naturally,  it  flapped. 

As  always,  given  a  sufficient  number  of  phi¬ 
losophers,  some  one  of  them  is  bound  to  arrive  at 
the  correct  opinion  on  every  possible  question. 
The  practical  difficulty  is  to  make  out,  in  any 
special  case,  which  philosopher  it  is.  In  the  end, 
the  one  who  happened  to  guess  right  commonly 
gets  rather  more  credit  than  he  really  deserves. 

6  7 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


Nevertheless,  taken  in  the  long  run,  the  method 
of  philosophy  has  abundantly  justified  itself  by 
its  results. 

We  have  already  seen  at  some  length  the  re¬ 
sults  of  applying  the  method  of  theology  to 
a  comparatively  simple  astronomical  problem. 
The  '‘sacred  theory  of  the  earth”  which  cul¬ 
minates  in  the  cosmology  of  “Paradise  Lost”  is 
one  of  the  outstanding  monuments  of  human 
folly.  It  sent  several  scientific  men  to  prison  and 
two  or  three  to  death ;  and  it  held  back  the  prog¬ 
ress  of  Europe  for  a  century.  And  yet,  once 
granted  the  truth  of  the  main  presupposition  of 
all  theology,  there  is  no  escape  from  the  opinion 
that  John  Milton  was  right  and  Sir  Isaac,  his 
contemporary,  wrong. 

Here,  then,  is  the  basal  weakness  of  all  theol¬ 
ogy,  that  it  is  always  at  the  mercy  of  historical 
accident.  If  the  men  who  wrote  the  Bible  had 
chanced  to  know  less  about  Babylonian  science 
and  more  about  Greek  —  having  no  science  of 
their  own  in  either  case  —  the  whole  history  of 
Christian  thought  might  have  been  profoundly 
different.  No  man,  for  example,  who  knew  the 
inside  of  the  Alexandrian  observatory  could  have 
written  the  Revelation  of  St.  John  the  Divine. 

Or  suppose  the  story  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels 
shifted  a  hundred  years  forward  or  back  in  time, 
or  a  hundred  miles  east  or  west  in  space.  As  they 
stand,  the  Synoptic  Gospels  teem  with  devils. 

68  / 


OUR  FOUR  SOURCES  OF  OPINION 


Half  the  incidents  of  Mark  are  concerned  with 
them.  But  there  are  no  demons  in  the  Fourth 
Gospel.  The  Synoptic  narrative  happens  just  to 
hit  a  psychic  epidemic.  Therefore,  for  some 
seventeen  hundred  years,  Christian  theology 
made  the  existence  of  devils  a  cardinal  doctrine 
of  Christian  faith.  Incidentally,  the  doctrine 
caused  the  death  of  a  good  many  thousands  of 
entirely  innocent  persons  accused  of  witchcraft. 

One  gets  a  particularly  good  idea  of  what 
theology  was  like  in  its  palmy  days  from  one  of 
the  important  happenings  in  the  early  history  of 
modern  science,  the  trial  of  Michael  Servetus  at 
Geneva  in  1553.  Servetus  was  the  leading  natu¬ 
ralist  of  his  day,  and  among  other  important 
labors  he  had  brought  out  an  edition  of  Ptol¬ 
emy’s  old  geography,  that  being  still,  on  the 
whole,  in  spite  of  its  more  than  a  thousand  years 
of  age,  rather  more  reliable  than  any  contem¬ 
porary  work.  The  indictment  against  Servetus 
specified,  among  other  high  crimes  and  misde¬ 
meanors,  none  of  them  of  the  least  consequence, 
that  the  defendant  had,  in  this  work,  described 
the  Holy  Land  as  a  rather  sterile  country,  not  in 
the  least  given  to  flowing  with  milk  and  honey. 

To  this,  the  defendant  made  answer  that, 
whether  the  statement  was  correct  or  not,  he 
himself  was  in  no  wise  responsible,  since  he  was 
not  the  author,  but  only  the  editor,  of  the  work 
in  question.  The  court,  on  this  point,  ruled  for 

69 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 

the  plaintiff.  If  a  heathen  author  contradicts 
Holy  Writ,  a  Christian  editor  who  lets  the  text 
go  unaltered  makes  himself  equally  guilty. 

Overruled  on  this  point,  the  defense  fell  back 
on  the  matter  of  fact,  and  submitted  abundant 
evidence  from  travelers  and  others,  to  the  effect 
that  Ptolemy  was  right  and  the  Bible,  as  a  con¬ 
temporary  document,  quite  in  error.  Palestine, 
in  the  late  Middle  Ages,  was  demonstrably  not  in 
the  least  a  garden  of  the  Lord.  Again  the  court 
ruled  against  the  accused.  On  questions  involv¬ 
ing  points  of  doctrine,  all  testimony  as  to  mat¬ 
ters  of  fact  is  excluded. 

So  they  burned  Servetus  in  the  city  square; 
and  the  war  was  on,  the  three  hundred  years’ 
war  between  evidence  and  authority. 

The  result  is  that,  to-day,  we  have  n’t  any 
theology.  Nominally,  indeed,  we  have;  but  what 
little  we  pretend  to  is  only  a  survival  from  the 
past,  with  no  life  of  its  own.  The  whole  con¬ 
ception  of  a  uniquely  and  literally  inspired  text, 
or  a  uniquely  and  infallibly  guided  church,  em¬ 
powered  to  set  limits  to  the  range  of  opinion, 
which  is  the  basis  of  all  theology,  has  simply  dis¬ 
appeared,  and  that  within  hardly  more  than  a 
single  generation.  An  old-fashioned  doctrinal 
sermon  cannot  be  preached  to-day,  because  no 
modern  clergyman  knows  enough  Christian 
doctrine  to  last  out  the  hour.  If  it  were,  it 
would  empty  the  pews.  Neither  clergy  nor  laity 

70 


OUR  FOUR  SOURCES  OF  OPINION 


have  so  much  as  heard  the  names  of  most  of 
those  essentials  of  the  Christian  faith  for  which 
holy  men  of  old  endured  exile,  prison,  and 
death.  Most  of  us,  to-day,  know  just  about  as 
much  concerning  Anabaptists,  Homoousians, 
and  Semi-Arians  as  we  know  concerning  kobolds, 
afrits,  and  warlocks  —  and  we  commonly  care 
rather  less. 

Only  once  before  in  history  has  so  vast  a  sys¬ 
tem  so  completely  and  so  suddenly  collapsed. 
Magic,  in  its  day,  was  also  “Queen  of  the 
Sciences.”  It  had  its  practitioners  and  its 
schools.  It  was  believed  “ semper ,  ubique ,  ab 
omnibus .”  In  fact,  time  has  been  when  theol¬ 
ogy  and  magic  together  covered  just  about  the 
ground  now  taken  care  of  by  philosophy  and 
science.  Theology  explained  the  universe;  magic 
controlled  practically  the  forces  of  nature.  A 
great  theologian  of  the  Middle  Ages  spoke  to 
the  learned  world  with  the  authority  which  now 
belongs  to  the  great  investigator.  A  great 
magician  had  much  the  popular  following  of 
Edison  and  Marconi.  Yet  only  students  of  his¬ 
tory  nowadays  know  that  there  ever  was  any 
such  thing  as  magic.  The  generation  now  grow¬ 
ing  up  is  only  dimly  aware  that  there  was  ever 
any  such  thing  as  theology. 

And  the  world  is  vastly  better  off!  Think,  for 
example,  how  much  more  mercifully,  and  how 
much  more  efficiently,  we  care  for  the  insane, 

7 1 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 

now  that  we  have  ceased  to  believe  in  devils; 
how  much  better  we  are  beginning  to  handle 
concrete  evils  and  definite  negligences  and  ig¬ 
norances,  as  we  get  clear  of  the  theological  ab¬ 
straction,  “sin”;  how  much  faster  is  the  prog¬ 
ress  of  useful  knowledge,  now  that  discoverers 
no  longer  face  an  interview  with  any  Court  of 
Inquisition.  Think  how  much  better  off  the 
Mohammedan  world  would  be  if  only  it  would 
stop  believing  the  Koran. 

Theology,  in  short,  the  whole  conception  of 
any  sort  of  past  that  has  authority  to  set  limits 
to  opinion  in  the  present,  does  not  belong  to  our 
world-view.  So  far  as  theology  explains  the  re¬ 
ligious  life,  that  task  is  much  better  done  by 
psychology,  historical  science,  and  the  philos¬ 
ophy  of  religion.  So  far  as  theology  explains  the 
universe,  it  merely  keeps  alive  the  bad  science 
and  the  bad  history  and  the  bad  philosophy  of 
the  days  of  ignorance.  Men  were  religious  long 
before  they  discovered  dogma.  The  most  devout 
men  and  the  most  righteous  have  commonly 
bothered  their  heads  least  over  points  of  doc¬ 
trine.  The  race  which  has  done  most  for  religion 
had,  in  its  best  days,  neither  theology  nor  phi¬ 
losophy  nor  science.  The  great  prophets  of 
Israel  were  conspicuously  persons  who  did  not 
make  anybody’s  creed  their  jailor. 

So  really,  to-day,  in  spite  of  too  numerous 
survivals,  we  have  only  three  sources  of  opinion, 

72 


OUR  FOUR  SOURCES  OF  OPINION 


not  four.  Practically,  much  that  passes  for 
theology  is  really  philosophy,  or  history,  or 
Biblical  exegesis,  or  sometimes  rather  bad  nat¬ 
ural  science.  Proper  theology,  as  the  world  knew 
it  two  centuries  ago,  is  as  far  away  from  us  now 
as  the  magic  of  two  centuries  earlier  than  that. 


CHAPTER  VII 

SCIENCE  AND  THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES 

The  end  of  science  is  prediction.  Any  branch  of 
knowledge  “arrives”  finally,  just  so  far  as  it  can 
say  with  certainty  that  such-and-such  phenom¬ 
ena  are  about  to  occur. 

Unfortunately,  no  one  of  the  actual  sciences 
ever  quite  attains  this  ideal,  not  even  astronomy, 
which  on  the  whole  comes  closest.  The  theory 
of  the  moon’s  motion  is  still  so  far  incomplete 
that  the  predicted  declinations  and  right  ascen¬ 
sions  have  to  be  adjusted  from  time  to  time  to 
match  the  place  where  the  lady  actually  is  in  the 
sky.  In  fact,  the  lunar  tables  of  the  Nautical 
Almanac  for  1923  had  to  be  entirely  refigured 
just  before  the  volume  went  to  press;  and  the 
solar  eclipse  of  the  autumn  before  was  fifteen 
seconds  off  schedule. 

The  object  of  this  scientific  prediction  is,  in 
part,  practical  convenience.  When  we  know 
what  is  going  to  occur,  we  can  commonly  more 
or  less  adjust  ourselves  to  the  inevitable.  More¬ 
over,  with  the  progress  of  knowledge,  we  are 
able  more  and  more  to  control  the  future  for 
ourselves,  so  that,  if  we  do  not  happen  to  like 
what  is  apparently  coming,  we  can  have  some- 

74 


SCIENCE  AND  THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES 


thing  else  instead.  The  method  of  science  justi¬ 
fies  itself  by  the  fact  that  its  predictions  do 
nearly  always  come  off  almost  right. 

For  this,  they  have  to  be  pretty  specific.  If 
we  build  a  bridge  of  such-and-such  material, 
after  such-and-such  a  design,  the  structure  will 
stand  up  under  such-and-such  a  load.  Whoever 
takes  the  trouble  to  be  present  at  precisely  such- 
and-such  a  point  on  the  earth,  at  precisely  such- 
and-such  future  date  and  time  of  day,  will  see 
the  sun  darkened  for  just  so  many  minutes  and 
seconds.  The  litter  of  a  white  rabbit  with  long 
ears,  mated  to  a  short-eared  black,  the  ancestry 
of  both  being  known,  will  contain  such-and-such 
a  proportion  of  black-and-white  young,  having 
such-and-such  a  length  of  ear.  If  the  Govern¬ 
ment  prints  so  many  paper  bills,  so  much  gold 
will  go  out  of  circulation.  “The  entire  task  of 
science,”  writes  Ostwald,  “is  to  establish  such 
relations  among  measurable  quantities  that, 
some  of  these  quantities  being  given,  the  others 
may  be  deduced.” 

Much  of  the  work  of  science  is,  so  to  say, 
backward  prediction.  If  competent  astronomers 
had  been  present  on  the  earth  at  a  series  of  past 
dates  some  seventy-odd  years  apart,  they  would 
have  recognized,  in  the  awful  portent  of  the  sky, 
the  same  old  Halley’s  comet  on  another  periodic 
return.  If  there  were  men  in  eastern  North 
America  toward  the  end  of  the  Pleistocene,  they 

75 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


saw  a  lobe  of  the  Labrador  ice  sheet  lying  with 
its  southern  edge  on  Cape  Cod.  If  we  ever  do  re¬ 
cover  the  original  autograph  of  the  Gospel  ac¬ 
cording  to  St.  Mark,  it  will  not  have  the  ending 
which  is  the  basis  of  that  in  King  James’s  ver¬ 
sion. 

Much  scientific  prediction,  moreover,  virtu¬ 
ally  all  of  it  in  the  applied  sciences,  takes  the 
form  —  not,  given  the  premises,  what  will  be  the 
result;  but,  given  the  desired  result,  what  con¬ 
ditions  must  be  selected  to  bring  this  about? 
The  sailor,  for  example,  properly  equipped,  can 
always  answer  the  question:  Suppose  I  steer  in 
this  direction,  where  shall  I  strike  land?  But  he 
actually  does  set  himself  the  problem:  In  which 
direction  must  I  steer  in  order  to  reach  the  port 
where  I  desire  to  go?  Both  forms  of  the  prob¬ 
lem,  however,  involve  prediction;  the  second 
quite  as  truly  as  the  first.  Science,  as  it  grows 
more  practical  year  by  year,  tends  more  and 
more  to  make  its  predictions  of  the  second  type. 

Now  it  would  be  quite  possible,  given  a  highly 
scientific  astronomy,  geography,  oceanography, 
and  the  rest,  to  help  out  the  silly  sailor,  by 
printing  him  a  list  of  all  ports,  with  instructions 
for  reaching  any  one  of  them  from  any  of  the 
rest.  Practically,  this  in  not  done.  The  sailor 
has  his  chart,  on  which  is  represented  in  quite 
arbitrary  symbols  a  vast  deal  of  accurate  infor¬ 
mation  concerning  sea  and  land.  With  the  aid  of 

76 


SCIENCE  AND  THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES 


this,  the  sailor,  even  in  unfamiliar  waters,  finds 
his  way  wherever  he  desires  to  go.  The  chart, 
then,  is  a  highly  convenient  but  also  highly  con¬ 
ventional  representation  of  actual  land  and 
water,  by  means  of  which  the  navigator  attains 
his  ends  vastly  better  than  he  could  by  attend¬ 
ing  only  to  the  real  water  and  the  actual  land. 

Not  otherwise  is  it  with  the  chart  of  the  uni¬ 
verse  which  we  call  the  body  of  scientific  theory. 
Modern  science  is  a  highly  conventional,  very 
detailed,  extraordinarily  accurate  model,  by 
means  of  which  men  remember,  or  describe,  or 
anticipate,  or  control  occurrences  incomparably 
better  than  they  ever  dreamed  of  doing  in  pre- 
scientific  days.  But  the  world  of  science  is  not 
the  real  world,  any  more  than  the  blue  areas  on 
the  seaman’s  chart  are  real  sea.  The  painted 
ocean  of  the  navigator  is,  for  certain  special  pur¬ 
poses,  a  great  deal  better  than  the  real  sea  — 
but  one  cannot  catch  fish  out  of  it.  So  the  ideal 
world  of  natural  science  is,  for  very  many  uses,  a 
great  deal  more  illuminating  than  the  real  world 
of  experience  —  but  human  beings  do  not  live 
in  it. 

Science  is,  then,  for  the  last  three  hundred 
years,  engaged  in  constructing  an  imaginary 
world,  which  so  far  corresponds,  bit  by  bit,  with 
the  real  world,  that  men  get  on  by  its  aid  in  the 
real  world  as  much  better  than  they  used,  as  a 
modern  coastwise  freighter  has  the  advantage 

77 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


over  the  ships  of  Cabot  and  Champlain.  But 
men  of  science  and  sea  captains  alike,  sail  by 
their  charts,  not  on  them. 

Our  physics,  for  example,  deals  with  friction¬ 
less  fluids,  weightless  levers,  rigid  solids,  perfect 
gases,  none  of  which  exist  in  the  real  world,  but 
are  parts  of  an  ideal  universe  which  science  has 
spun  out  of  its  own  head  for  the  sake  of  dealing 
handily  with  the  excessive  complexities  of  things 
as  they  actually  are.  Even  our  time  of  day  is  not 
based  on  any  behavior  of  the  real  earth  out  of 
which  we  dig  a  living;  but  on  the  revolution 
about  the  sun  of  a  purely  fictitious  and  scientific 
earth,  which  for  only  four  instants  in  the  year 
coincides  in  position  with  the  real  one.  Our  sun¬ 
dials  belong  to  the  real  world.  But  our  watches 
record  only  an  abstraction  of  the  astronomical 
mind. 

Practically,  this  imaginary  universe  of  science 
has  to  be  eased  off  a  good  deal  in  places  to  fit 
things  as  they  are.  Virtually  no  “law  of  science,” 
for  example,  ever  holds  quite  to  the  limit  of  the 
best  observation,  and  even  then  only  through 
the  middle  range  of  the  phenomena.  Boyle’s  law, 
notoriously,  breaks  down  for  gases  anywhere 
near  the  boiling  points  of  their  liquids.  Play¬ 
fair’s  law  does  not  hold  for  a  country  that  has 
been  glaciated.  The  Relativists  rejoice  especially 
over  showing  why  Prout’s  law  never  really 
works.  Mendel’s  law  is  very  far  from  taking  all 

78  • 


SCIENCE  AND  THINGS -IN -THEM SELVES 


the  uncertainty  out  of  horse-racing.  In  short, 
the  whole  conception  of  a  universe  “  governed 
by  law,”  and  of  “laws  of  nature,”  universal, 
immutable,  which  have  to  be  “overruled,”  or 
“set  aside,”  or  interfered  with  by  “the  opera¬ 
tion  of  higher  laws,”  belongs  entirely  to  theol¬ 
ogy,  and  has  no  place  whatever  in  science. 

In  other  words,  while  the  facts  of  science  are, 
in  large  part,  facts  of  the  real  world,  the  theories 
of  science  and  the  laws  of  science  are  constructs 
of  the  scientific  mind.  Sometimes,  as  conspicu¬ 
ously  in  the  natural  history7  sciences,  these  con¬ 
structs  probably  match  somewhat  closely  the 
reality.  But,  even  here,  a  scientific  “species,” 
for  example,  has  no  objective  existence.  The 
ph  ysical  sciences,  on  the  other  hand,  have  quite 
frankly  cut  loose  from  all  semblance  of  reality. 
The  concept  of  the  ether,  not  only  flatly  con¬ 
tradicts  all  that  we  have  experienced  concerning 
the  properties  of  bodies ;  it  is  not  even  consistent 
with  itself  —  a  perfect  fluid  more  rigid  than 
steel,  a  weightless  substance  heavier  than  lead. 
Or,  to  jump  across  the  great  gulf  between  mind 
and  matter,  there  is  the  subconsciousness  —  the 
thoughts  that  nobody  is  thinking.  All  this 
troubles  no  scientific  person  —  though  report 
has  it  that  Huckleberry  Finn  was  a  good  deal 
put  out  to  discover  that  lands,  red  on  the  map, 
may  be  green  in  reality. 

The  method  by  which  science  constructs  its 

79 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


ideal  world  is,  of  course,  by  successive  abstrac¬ 
tions.  We  select  some  few  aspects  of  the  actual 
universe;  then  we  imagine  another  universe  in 
which  these  particular  aspects  of  the  world  we 
know  would  appear,  uncomplicated  by  all  those 
other  aspects  which  always  bear  them  company 
in  reality.  This  abstraction  may  be  compara¬ 
tively  slight,  as  in  the  historical  and  social 
sciences.  It  may  be  carried  to  the  last  extreme, 
as  in  mathematics,  where  nothing  whatever  re¬ 
mains  of  the  world  of  experience  except  points 
and  lines  and  abstract  number,  none  of  which 
occur  at  all  in  the  real  world.  Between  these  ex¬ 
tremes  lie  the  rest  of  the  various  sciences.  But 
they  all  abstract  something.  None  of  them  pre¬ 
tend  to  match  the  complexity  of  things  as  they 
are. 

Nor  is  this  method  of  abstraction  in  the  least 
confined  to  natural  science.  All  literature  does 
it;  and  all  art. 

Of  the  graphic  arts,  for  example,  photography 
in  color  comes  closest  to  reality.  But  painting 
begins  by  dropping  out  most  of  the  detail.  A 
crayon  drawing  in  black  and  white  goes  another 
step  along  the  same  path.  A  pen-and-ink  sketch 
consists  entirely  of  lines,  not  one  of  which  occurs 
anywhere  in  nature.  Yet  people  buy  etchings 
when  they  might  have  photographs. 

Even  our  moralities  are  an  abstraction.  The 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  discusses  the  problem: 

80 


SCIENCE  AND  THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES 


What  sort  of  conduct  would  be  appropriate  for 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,  supposing  this  to  be 
already  present  and  universal,  with  all  wicked 
persons  conveniently  out  of  the  way?  Thus,  by 
the  same  method  by  which  the  Christian  world 
has  come  to  its  science,  it  has  come  also  to  its 
ethics.  But  the  world  in  which  men  may  wisely 
resist  not  evil  and  turn  the  other  cheek  is  still  an 
ideal,  an  abstracted  and  artificially  simplified 
picture  of  reality.  In  the  world  of  everyday  con¬ 
duct,  as  in  the  various  branches  of  engineering, 
there  is  always  “the  factor  of  safety.” 

I  have  been  writing,  all  along,  as  if  we  men 
have  to  do  with  only  two  worlds,  a  real  world  of 
common-sense  experience  and  an  ideal  world 
of  science  that  is  a  simplified  model  of  it.  This, 
however,  has  been  only  for  convenience.  Every¬ 
body  nowadays  is  supposed  to  know  that  the 
everyday  world  of  common  sense  is  itself  only 
phenomenal.  The  true  reality,  the  world  of 
things-in-themselves,  is  pretty  certainly  some¬ 
thing  quite  different.  So,  ultimately,  we  have  to 
take  account  of  three  worlds,  not  two. 

Just  how  far  we  of  the  phenomenal  world  have 
also  direct  access  to  the  other  world  of  realities, 
is  not  a  matter  on  which  it  is  wise  to  be  too  cer¬ 
tain.  Kant  held  the  moral  law  to  be  part  of 
things-in-themselves.  Many  religious  people 
have  believed  that  they  have  personal  and  in¬ 
communicable  experiences  that  take  them  for 

81 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


the  moment  behind  the  veil  and  show  them 
transcendental  truth.  The  followers  of  Herbert 
Spencer  were  convinced  that  they  knew  at  least 
enough  about  the  Absolute  to  be  sure  that  no¬ 
body  will  ever  find  out  anything  more. 

However  these  may  be,  modern  opinion  is 
pretty  unanimous  that  we  are  citizens  of  three 
countries,  concerned  by  turns  with  the  affairs 
now  of  one  and  now  of  another.  Sometimes  we 
dwell  in  the  world  of  science,  with  its  predictable 
future,  its  forces  and  laws,  its  “uniformity.” 
Mostly,  we  dwell  in  the  phenomenal  world, 
which  for  common  purposes  we  treat  as  the  real 
world,  a  world  of  freedom  and  struggle  and  hope. 
But  we  are  supposed  to  reflect,  occasionally,  that 
the  properties  of  this  phenomenal  world  will  not 
stand  critical  analysis.  How  far,  as  philosophers, 
we  are  capable  of  transcending  both  the  world  of 
phenomena  and  the  world  of  science,  is  one  of  the 
matters  which  serious-minded  men  ought  dili¬ 
gently  to  consider. 

At  any  rate,  we  are  concerned  with  three  as¬ 
pects  of  experience;  and  propositions  true  con¬ 
cerning  any  one  of  the  three  are  not  necessarily 
true  concerning  either  of  the  others.  An  excel¬ 
lent  device,  therefore,  for  attaining  to  the  acme 
of  confusion,  is  to  ignore  all  distinction  among 
the  relative,  the  absolute,  and  the  scientific,  and 
to  treat  the  remarks  of  wiser  persons  concerning 
one  of  these  as  if  they  were  intended  to  apply  to 

82 


SCIENCE  AND  THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES 


another  or  to  all.  A  great  deal  of  the  hostility  of 
many  excellent  persons  to  both  philosophy  and 
science  has  no  other  basis  than  this. 

Or,  if  one  does  not  like  philosophizing,  there  is 
always  the  “double  aspect”  doctrine. 

Every  event  of  the  phenomenal  world  looks 
two  ways,  has,  in  fact,  two  sides.  Symphonies, 
sonnets,  sunsets,  various  other  interesting  things, 
are  all  describable  in  terms  of  wave  lengths  and 
wave  forms  and  time  intervals  and  various 
specially  shaped  black  marks  on  white  paper. 
But  one  need  not  point  out  that  if  symphonies, 
sunsets,  and  sonnets  had  no  other  aspect  than 
this,  men  would  never  have  bothered  to  notice 
one  portion  of  these,  nor  have  gone  to  the  labor 
of  creating  the  other.  All  have  another  side,  in 
which  vibration  numbers  and  printers’  ink  have 
no  part. 

The  aspect  of  “description”  and  the  aspect 
of  “appreciation  ”  are  the  technical  terms,  which, 
in  English,  designate  these  two  sides  of  all  oc¬ 
currences.  The  words  are  not  altogether  happy; 
but  there  is  no  doubt  what  they  mean. 

One  cannot  say  that  either  aspect  of  things  is 
more  “real”  than  the  other.  Each  has  its  place 
in  our  mental  life.  Each  serves  its  special  pur¬ 
pose.  Science  is,  obviously,  limited  absolutely  to 
the  descriptive  aspect  of  everything.  If  science 
should  ever  attempt  to  transcend  this  limit,  it 
would  forthwith  break  down.  There  never  will 

83 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


be  any  such  attempt,  because  this  distinction 
between  the  two  aspects  of  nature,  and  the  lim¬ 
itation  of  natural  knowledge  to  one  aspect  only, 
have  been  commonplaces  of  the  scientific  world, 
even  from  the  days  of  Aristotle. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  line  lies  the  “world  of 
appreciation,”  “God,  freedom,  and  immortal¬ 
ity,”  and  all  the  rest  of  the  “spiritual  values”  — 
though  all  these  have,  of  course,  also  their  “de¬ 
scriptive”  side.  But,  unfortunately,  the  persons 
who  have  most  especially  concerned  themselves 
with  the  appreciative  side  of  things  have  seemed 
to  be,  by  nature,  an  uncommonly  muddle- 
headed  lot,  to  whom  any  sort  of  logical  distinc¬ 
tion  is  a  sealed  book.  They  have,  therefore,  felt 
free  to  use  any  word  in  the  language  in  any 
sense  that  pleased  them,  figurative  or  literal,  and 
to  attribute  to  other  more  careful  persons  what¬ 
ever  opinions  emerge  from  the  process.  They 
jump  back  and  forth  from  “appreciation”  to 
“description”  without  noticing  which  side  of 
the  fence  they  are,  for  the  instant,  on.  They  re¬ 
peat  statements,  obviously  true  in  one  sense,  as 
if  they  had  any  significance  in  another.  Much  of 
the  regrettable  “conflict  between  religion  and 
science,”  much  of  the  regrettable  hostility  of 
sincerely  religious  people  to  all  forms  of  “mod¬ 
ernism,”  has  no  other  basis  than  this  carrying 
across  of  indisputable  truths  of  the  world  of 
description  into  the  world  of  appreciation,  by 

84 


SCIENCE  AND  THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES 


people  who  have  never  heard  of  the  differ¬ 
ence. 

The  wise  man,  therefore,  whether  scientific  or 
not,  and  whether  he  chooses  to  think  of  himself 
as  dwelling  by  turns  in  three  worlds,  or  as  shar¬ 
ing  two  aspects  of  one,  will  always  ask  himself 
concerning  any  proposition  which  he  is  asked  to 
accept:  To  which  world,  or  to  which  aspect  of 
the  world,  is  this  formula  intended  to  apply? 
For  the  rest,  the  non-scientific  person  will  do  well 
to  bear  in  mind  that  all  the  conclusions  of  nat¬ 
ural  science  with  which  he  has  any  concern  are 
already  printed  in  some  standard  text  or  refer¬ 
ence  book.  What  cannot  be  found  in  these,  and 
cited  chapter  and  verse,  is  gossip  and  rumor  and 
obiter  dicta ,  for  which  the  scientific  world  is  not 
responsible.  These  two  simple  rules  will  save 
many  worthy  persons  from  a  great  deal  of  quite 
unnecessary  sorrow  of  heart  —  and  from  a  great 
deal  of  quite  unnecessary  confusion  of  mind. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

PRIMITIVE  SOULS  AND  GHOSTS 

The  only  way  really  to  grasp  any  general  idea  is 
to  turn  historian.  When  one  knows  where  the 
idea  came  from,  who  originated  it  and  why,  and 
how  and  why  it  has  altered  since  at  the  hands  of 
other  men,  then  one  may  be  reasonably  sure 
that  his  mental  teeth  have  bitten  in.  Anything 
much  short  of  this  leaves  us  still  uncertain 
whether,  after  all,  we  may  not,  somehow,  have 
missed  the  point. 

All  this  is  especially  the  case  with  very  old 
ideas.  These  have  nearly  always  changed  their 
shape  with  the  progress  of  the  centuries,  and 
therefore,  as  they  now  lie  in  our  minds,  contain 
remnants  and  survivals  from  many  strata  of 
past  belief.  Our  words  tend  to  persist  long  after 
the  ideas  have  altered.  Of  no  opinion  is  this 
more  true  than  of  our  present-day  conceptions 
of  the  soul.  None,  moreover,  is  more  funda¬ 
mental  for  religion.  Concerning  none  is  it  more 
important  that  each  of  us  should  be  fully  per¬ 
suaded  in  his  own  mind. 

Now  it  happens  that  the  difference  between 
a  living  man  and  a  dead  man  is  one  of  the  few 
scientific  questions  which  early  man  felt  called 

86 


PRIMITIVE  SOULS  AND  GHOSTS 


upon  to  answer.  By  way  of  this  problem  — 
which  is  still  unsolved  —  our  forbears  of  the 
stone  age  took  the  first  step  of  the  long  journey 
that  has  led  to  civilization.  And  since  all  of  us 
men,  everywhere  on  earth  and  throughout  all 
known  time,  are  brothers  under  our  skins,  virtu¬ 
ally  all  of  us,  confronted  with  the  same  situation, 
have  thought  it  through  to  much  the  same  end. 

So  long  as  a  man  is  “alive/’  his  heart  beats.  | 
The  more  alive  he  is  —  as,  for  example,  when  he 
follows  his  quarry  in  hunt  or  confronts  his  enemy 
in  battle  —  the  harder  and  faster  his  heart 
pumps.  Moreover,  all  strong  emotion  obviously 
affects  the  circulation.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
a  man  is  “dead,”  then  his  heart  beats  no  more. 

Here,  then,  is  a  good  working  hypothesis: 
The  “life”  is  in  the  heart,  along  with  other  qual¬ 
ities,  good  and  bad.  Presumably,  therefore,  if 
we  devour  the  heart  of  strong  beast  or  brave  foe, 
all  sorts  of  excellences  will  be  added  unto  us. 

But  men  do  not  stand  to  the  aurochs  nor  wax 
valiant  in  fight,  without  picking  up  a  certain 
amount  of  anatomy.  The  heart  has  a  great  deal 
to  do  with  the  blood ;  a  bleeding  man  grows 
weaker,  and  then  dies.  Most  peoples  have  fol¬ 
lowed  the  inevitable  logic.  The  heart  gets  its 
properties  by  virtue  of  its  relation  to  the  blood. 
“The  blood  is  the  life.” 

Oddly  enough,  as  it  turns  out,  the  vital  fluid  is 
really  about  the  least  alive  of  all  our  tissues,  and 

87 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


about  the  least  essential  to  that  “continuous  ad¬ 
justment  of  internal  relations  to  external  rela¬ 
tions,”  which  is  Herbert  Spencer's  definition  of 
life.  Many  times  more  than  half  the  living 
creatures  on  the  earth  have  no  blood.  But  pre- 
scientific  man  does  not  know  either  of  these 
facts;  and,  given  the  facts  that  he  does  know,  his 
reasoning  is  sound  so  far. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  more  pervasive 
fallacy,  nor  more  persistent,  than  that  which  ex¬ 
plains  a  function  by  inventing  an  entity.  We 
wonder  how  we  remember;  and  we  invent  a 
“faculty  of  memory”  to  account  for  the  mys¬ 
tery,  and  flatter  ourselves  that  we  are  any  farther 
along  than  we  were  before.  Our  love  for  our  off¬ 
spring  has  been  referred  to  an  “organ  of  philo¬ 
progenitiveness.”  Even  well  up  toward  the  end 
of  the  last  century,  scholarly  men  could  suppose 
that  we  differ  from  the  brutes  by  virtue  of  a 
“power”  of  reason  and  a  “gift”  of  speech,  acting 
under  the  impulsion  of  a  “will.”  We  still  attri¬ 
bute  specific  unrighteousness  to  a  “state  of  sin.” 

Naturally,  in  less  critical  times,  the  same 
deep-seated  human  weakness  resulted  in  the  con¬ 
ception  of  a  blood-soul. 

One  meets  the  idea  in  all  sorts  of  forms.  The 
clever  damsel  in  Grimm’s  familiar  marchen ,  to 
conceal  her  elopement,  pricks  her  finger  and 
leaves  behind  three  drops  of  blood  which  an¬ 
swer  in  turn  for  her.  “The  voice  of  [Abel]  thy 

88 


's  i pvxv,  winged  and  diminutive,  flutters  above  the  corpse. 
From  a  Greek  vase. 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


brother’s  blood  crieth  unto  me  from  the  ground.” 
“And  his  soul,”  runs  Homer’s  formula,  “through 
the  stricken  wound,  sped  hastily  away.”  Even 
the  great  Harvey,  founder  of  modern  physiol- 
ogy,  placed  the  soul  in  the  blood. 

Such  conceptions  are  universal  in  early  re¬ 
ligions.  Wine  is  the  blood  of  Dionysos;  whoso 
drinks  it  becomes  as  the  immortal  gods.  The 
initiate  into  the  mysteries  of  Mithra  gains  his 
new  soul  by  way  of  the  bath  in  bullock’s  blood, 
which  in  turn  connects  with  the  mystic  bull 
slain  before  the  foundation  of  the  world,  from 
whose  blood  and  body  sprang  all  the  kindly 
fruits  of  the  earth.  Doubtless,  in  all  this  there 
is  a  certain  element  of  instinct;  since  men  do 
have,  apparently,  an  instinctive  dread  of  blood 
similar  to  our  fear  of  high  places  and  snakes. 
Moreover,  it  is  often  difficult  to  separate  the 
idea  of  a  blood-soul  from  the  magic  properties  of 
blood.  Nevertheless,  in  most  folk-lore,  and  in 
most  primitive  religion,  and  even  in  our  own 
science  in  its  callow  days,  there  is  a  blood-soul 
which  is  not  the  blood  itself. 

Unfortunately  for  the  clarity  of  mind  of  both 
the  ancient  world  and  ourselves,  precisely  the 
same  reasoning  that  proves  the  life  to  be  in  the 
blood,  proves  it  also  to  be  in  the  breath.  And 
breath  is  wind.  And  wind  is  air.  And  air  is  a 
great  mystery,  present  yet  impalpable,  matter, 
and  yet  a  finer  sort.  “And  Javeh  Elohim,”  says 

90 


PRIMITIVE  SOULS  AND  GHOSTS 


the  author  of  most  of  the  second  chapter  of 
Genesis,  “formed  man  out  of  the  dust  of  the 
ground,  and  blew  the  wind  into  his  nose,  and  man 
became  alive/’ 

But  whether  the  life  inheres  in  the  blood  or  in 
the  breath,  this  “life,”  for  simple-minded  antiq¬ 
uity,  is  never  any  “delicately  balanced  system 
of  bio-chemical  functions.”  The  “life”  is  the 
same  thing  as  the  “soul,”  and  the  “soul”  is 
always  a  material  object.  Naturally,  therefore, 
any  body  which  moves,  or  has  any  interesting 
properties  of  any  sort,  has  also  a  “soul.”  Hence 
follows  the  universal  primitive  animism. 

Inevitably,  also,  our  physiological  psychology 
had  to  be  preceded  by  a  psychological  physi¬ 
ology.  Descartes,  for  example,  whose  mathe¬ 
matics  certainly  was  not  in  the  least  primitive, 
held  that  the  soul,  to  move  the  body,  runs  out 
through  trapdoors  in  the  floor  of  the  ventrical, 
flows  along  tubes  within  the  nerves,  and  stimu¬ 
lates  the  muscles  to  contract.  As  for  the  loca¬ 
tion  of  the  soul  in  the  body,  men  who  fight  with 
pointed  weapons  put  it  usually  somewhere  in  the 
trunk,  as  Aristotle,  for  example,  in  the  heart. 
But  cruder  peoples,  who  bash  one  another’s 
heads  with  clubs,  put  the  soul  in  the  brain, 
quite  in  the  Cartesian  manner.  Samson’s  soul 
was,  partly,  in  his  hair.  Even  the  parings  of  the 
nails  falling  into  the  hands  of  an  enemy  may 
give  him  a  hold  on  one’s  life. . 

91 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


No  reason,  however,  appears  to  the  unso¬ 
phisticated  mind,  why  men  or  beasts  or  swords 
or  stars  should  have  only  one  soul  apiece.  The 
“life”  which  is  in  the  breast  and  makes  the 
heart  beat  need  not  be  identical  with  that  which 
dwells  in  the  belly  and  is  strengthened  after 
meat.  Early  man,  therefore,  commonly  has 
many  souls,  distributed  variously  over  the  body. 
Or  sometimes,  as  among  the  Egyptians  —  a 
conception  which  survives  among  us  still  — 
each  of  the  various  souls,  which  in  this  particu¬ 
lar  case  happen  to  be  seven  in  number,  occupies 
the  entire  body,  and  each  has  the  complete 
shape  of  the  body.  But  they  are  in  successions 
of  finer  and  finer  matter,  each  interpenetrating 
all  those  less  subtile  than  itself.  So  there  are 
souls  and  ghosts  and  doubles  and  shades  and 
spirits  and  astral  bodies  without  end. 

Names,  also,  are  souls.  For  the  name,  for 
primitive  man,  is  no  mere  assemblage  of  black 
marks  in  the  telephone  book,  but  a  portion  of  the 
mysterious  air,  shaped  by  the  lips  into  sound,  a 
part  of  the  man’s  own  living  breath,  pregnant 
with  all  magic.  Thus,  for  certain  ancient  Egyp¬ 
tians,  the  name-soul  holds  the  other  six  souls  to¬ 
gether  and  gives  the  personal  unity,  while  name 
taboos  play  so  large  a  part  in  primitive  life  that 
we  shall  probably  never  know  how  the  ancient 
Hebrews  actually  pronounced  the  dread  name  of 
their  God.  Glimpses  of  the  name-soul  still  ap- 

92 


PRIMITIVE  SOULS  AND  GHOSTS 


pear  in  such  divers  places  as  Grimm’s  tale  of 
“  Rumpelstiltskin  ”  and  the  familiar  formula  of 
Christian  baptism. 

Nor  need  a  soul  be  inside  the  body  at  all. 

The  shadow  is,  of  course,  one  of  the  souls.  So 
are  the  footprints.  There  are  social  circles  where 
it  is  very  bad  form,  indeed,  to  step  on  another 
man’s  shade,  where  “may  your  shadow  never 
grow  less”  is  by  no  means  a  figure  of  speech,  and 
where  men  feel  distinctly  easier  in  their  minds  at 
night  and  morning  than  at  noon.  Men,  also, 
lose  their  shadows,  as  they  lose  their  other  souls. 
One  wants  to  look  out  lest  some  shadowless 
person  steal  his;  and,  in  general,  any  being  who 
does  not  cast  a  shadow  is  always  under  suspi¬ 
cion. 

Not  a  few  savages,  before  setting  out  on  a 
journey  or  going  into  battle,  take  precaution  to 
deposit  one  or  more  of  their  souls  in  the  care  of 
the  local  medicine  man  against  their  safe  return. 
Ogres,  giants,  and  the  like,  it  is  well  known,  often 
hide  their  souls  in  some  distant  or  unlikely  spot, 
and  so  remain  invulnerable,  until  the  hero  of  the 
tale  discovers  the  secret  and  squeezes  out  the 
life.  The  rational  soul  of  “  Orlando  Furioso  ’’flew 
away  to  the  moon,  and  Orlando  went  crazy  un¬ 
til  his  friends  brought  it  back  to  him  in  a  bottle, 
and  uncorked  the  bottle  under  his  nose. 

All  guardian  angels,  “good  angels,”  daemons, 
fravashis,  and  the  like,  are  essentially  such  ab- 

93. 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 

sent  souls,  which  may  keep  near  their  owners  as 
Doppelganger,  or,  like  those  of  Matthew  18:10, 
may  dwell  always  with  the  gods  until  their 
bodies  join  them.  Certain  ancient  Egyptians, 
for  example,  believed  in  an  invisible  guardian 
companion,  which  walks  by  each  man’s  side 
throughout  life,  leaves  him  shortly  before  death, 
precedes  him  to  the  future  world,  prepares  a 
place  for  him  there,  and  welcomes  him  on  ar¬ 
rival.  Then,  for  the  first  time,  the  two  are  united 
and  live  happily  forever  afterwards,  the  double 
providing  the  new  “spiritual”  body  to  replace 
that  left  behind  in  the  grave. 

But  once  given  the  idea  of  a  soul  outside  its 
body,  it  is  only  the  shortest  of  steps  to  the  idea 
of  non-human  intelligences,  spirits  that  have 
never  had  flesh-and-blood  bodies.  Angels,  devils, 
and  certain  types  of  gods  are  of  this  origin.  An¬ 
gels,  originally  a  Persian  discovery,  have  bodies 
of  flame,  and  connect  interestingly  with  the 
shooting  stars. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  those  strange 
creatures  of  our  folk-lore  —  gnomes,  elves,  fair¬ 
ies,  and  the  rest  —  who  have  all  the  attributes 
of  personality,  but  have  no  souls,  and,  therefore, 
though  they  live  a  thousand  years,  finally  go  out 
like  a  candle.  There  are 

“.  . .  the  dancers  of  the  woods, 

That  know  not  the  hard  burden  of  the  world, 
Having  but  breath  in  their  kind  bodies  . . .” 

94, 


PRIMITIVE  SOULS  AND  GHOSTS 


who  yet 

“would  love  as  men  do, 

And  be  as  patient  and  as  pitiful.” 

Who  does  not  recall  those  touching  stories, 
found  in  various  parts  of  the  world,  in  which,  as 
in  the  “Thousand  and  One  Nights,”  the  soulless 
elemental  being  shows  so  much  goodness  and 
fortitude  and  constancy,  that  the  All-Merciful, 
in  the  end,  grants  her  a  soul,  that  she  may  dwell 
with  her  lover  in  paradise?  It  has  been  a  long 
process  by  which  men  have  come  to  associate 
either  the  intelligence  or  the  moral  nature  with 
the  “life” ;  and  we  still  sing 

“My  soul,  be  on  thy  guard!” 

—  as  if  our  souls  were  not  really  us. 

With  us  mortals,  obviously,  at  least  one  of  the 
souls  departs  from  the  body  during  sleep,  wan¬ 
ders  about,  and  meets  all  sorts  of  strange  adven¬ 
tures  in  a  world  which  to  primitive  man  is  just 
as  real  as  the  waking  one.  To  add  to  the  excite¬ 
ment  of  the  dream,  the  wandering  soul  is  always 
taking  the  chance  that,  on  returning  to  its  body 
at  daybreak,  it  may  find  its  habitation  occupied, 
perhaps  by  the  soul  of  another  sleeper,  or  of  a 
dead  man,  or,  more  likely  still,  by  an  evil  spirit, 
who,  having  no  body  of  its  own,  has  slipped  into 
an  open  mouth.  The  soul  of  the  Reverend  Fa¬ 
ther  Alberigo,  in  Dante’s  account,  has  gone  to  its 
rest  in  the  ninth  circle  of  hell,  while  his  body,  in- 

95 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


habited  by  a  demon,  is  doing  business  as  usual 
in  the  upper  world. 

Hence,  in  all  ages,  the  need  of  casting  out 
devils.  As  late  as  James  I,  in  England,  the  Con¬ 
vocation,  to  avoid  scandal,  forbade  the  lesser 
clergy  from  exorcising  possessed  persons  except 
by  permission  of  their  bishops.  For  the  student 
of  obsolescent  opinion,  there  is  no  more  bizarre 
chapter  in  history  than  that  which  deals  with  the 
relation  of  spirits  to  other  bodies  than  their  own. 

Fortunately,  however,  for  us,  the  peoples 
with  whom,  historically,  we  have  most  to  do, 
finally  reduced  all  these  multifarious  sorts  of 
soul  to  two  only  in  addition  to  the  mind,  both, 
so  to  say,  resident  in  the  body.  These  are,  in 
ancient  terms,  the  pneuma  and  the  psyche;  or,  as 
we  are  wont  now  to  call  them,  the  breath-soul 
and  the  body-soul.  Both  are,  of  course,  ulti¬ 
mately  identical  with  the  life,  and  explain  why 
living  creatures  act  as  they  do.  Both,  more¬ 
over,  however  tenuous,  are  always  somewhere  in 
space,  and  therefore  are  “ matter’ ’  and  not 
“mind.” 

The  body-soul  inheres  especially  in  the  flesh 
and  bones  and  blood.  People  who  believe  in  a 
body-soul  commonly  bury  their  dead.  They 
may  decorate  the  tomb  with  pictures,  for  the 
soul’s  amusement.  They  may  kill  slaves  or 
wives  at  the  grave,  that  their  body-souls  may 
minister  to  the  departed.  Almost  always  they 

96 


PRIMITIVE  SOULS  AND  GHOSTS 


set  out  food,  at  least  once,  and  often  from  time 
to  time,  or  pour  out  libations  on  the  ground  for 
whatever  souls  happen  to  be  near.  Luckily  for 
the  archaeologist,  they  commonly  bury  orna¬ 
ments  and  weapons;  though  unluckily  they 
frequently  “kill”  these  latter,  by  breaking  off 
their  points  to  let  out  their  animce. 

The  body-soul  is  thought  of  as  lingering  near 
the  grave,  sid,  tumulus,  or  cairn,  or  as  actually  in 
it,  in  shape  more  or  less  like  the  original  man  in 
life  or  the  skeleton  to  which  he  is  shortly  re¬ 
duced.  The  mourner  goes  to  the  burial-place  to 
weep,  leaves  flowers  there,  or  burns  paper 
images,  as  his  own  birthplace  chances  to  be.  Our 
own  ceremonial  laying  of  corner  stones,  with  ob¬ 
jects  buried  under  them,  survives  from  a  day 
when  men  were  buried  in  the  similar  location  in 
order  that  their  body-souls  might  guard  the 
building. 

Our  own  ghosts  are,  of  course,  body-souls.  We 
fear  graveyards  between  midnight  and  cock 
crow,  because  that  is  the  time  when  body-souls 
are  out,  and  who  knows  what  they  might  not  do 
if  they  caught  us?  For  special  reasons,  body- 
souls,  instead  of  keeping  near  their  tombs,  may 
haunt  their  old  abodes.  On  special  occasions 
they  may  “squeak  and  gibber  in  the  Roman 
streets.”  On  very  special  occasions,  indeed,  they 
may  return  to  their  former  bodies,  which  there¬ 
upon  rise  up  and  walk,  to  the  considerable  em- 

97 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


barrassment  of  the  timid  living.  In  fact,  no  small 
part  of  primitive  theology  is  concerned  with 
devices  for  keeping  the  ghosts  out  of  the  villages; 
and  the  first  tombstones  seem  to  have  been  to 
hold  the  dead  man  down. 

In  general,  fortunately,  the  body-soul  stands 
faithfully  by  its  bones  —  hence  the  virtue  of 
saints’  relics.  But  it  will  also  associate  itself  with 
other  personal  property  —  hence  the  value,  for 
the  psychometrizing  medium,  of  gloves,  hand¬ 
kerchiefs,  photographs,  and  locks  of  hair.  In 
fact,  body-souls  seem  to  be  glad  to  get  inside 
anything.  The  costliest  idol  that  ever  came  out 
of  Philadelphia  has  no  special  virtue  until  some 
homeless  spirit  enters  in  and  dwells  there. 

People  who  believe  in  a  breath-soul  take  just 
the  opposite  tack.  They  do  not  bury  food  or 
weapons.  They  do  not  embalm.  On  the  con¬ 
trary,  they  commonly  burn  the  dead  body,  to 
get  it  out  of  the  way  as  quickly  and  as  thor¬ 
oughly  as  possible,  so  that  the  breath-soul,  cut 
free  from  earthly  entanglements,  may  fly  away 
to  its  everlasting  habitation. 

Unfortunately,  however,  not  many  races  have 
held  either  theory  of  the  soul  and  the  hereafter 
without  some  admixture  of  the  opposite  opinion. 
Cultures  migrate,  are  borrowed  back  and  forth, 
are  impressed  by  conquest;  with  the  practical 
result  that  most  of  us,  confronted  with  a  choice 
of  opinions,  choose  both. 

98 


PRIMITIVE  SOULS  AND  GHOSTS 


The  well-greaved  Achaeans,  for  example,  are 
descendants  of  a  primitive  people  who  believed 
in  a  breath-soul  and  burned  their  dead ;  but  they 
overran  a  more  advanced  race  that  believed  in  a 
body-soul  and  buried  theirs.  So  they  compro- 


THE  SOUL-WEIGHING  (xpvxotrratrla)  OF  HECTOR  AND 

ACHILLES 


As  the  heroes  face  each  other  in  battle,  Hermes,  in  the  presence  of 
Zeus  and  Thetis,  tests  their  psyches  to  determine  which  is  to  fall. 

From  a  Greek  vase. 

mised  the  matter  by  believing  one  way  and  act¬ 
ing  the  other,  quite  in  the  modern  manner.  In 
the  end,  they  achieved  a  ritual  which  first  burned 
the  dead  man  to  get  rid  of  his  body,  and  then 
carefully  preserved  his  ashes,  as  if  they  had 
buried  him. 

Nobody  knows  what  Christians  nowadays  do 

99 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


believe.  Our  ordinary  language  hints  at  a  breath- 
soul  which  goes,  at  death,  straight  to  heaven  or 
hell  —  unless  it  lands  in  purgatory.  But  our 
burial  customs  suggest  a  body-soul  that  has  a 
very  special  interest  in  its  grave.  Most  of  us  are 
opposed  to  cremation.  Few  of  us  are  quite  at 
ease  in  a  churchyard  in  the  dark.  Apparently, 
somewhere  in  the  back  of  our  minds  is  the  im¬ 
memorial  doctrine  of  two  souls,  one  of  which  re¬ 
mains  near  the  body  while  the  other  flies  away. 
But  since,  this  side  of  the  thirteenth  century,  we 
are  supposed,  as  a  matter  of  theology,  to  be  lim¬ 
ited  to  a  belief  in  one  soul  only,  most  people,  so 
far  as  one  can  make  out,  fuse  pneuma  and 
psyche ,  and  think  of  their  dead  as  simultaneously 
both  in  the  grave  and  in  heaven.  One  cannot 
but  wish  that  there  could  be  somewhat  more 
general  agreement  on  some  of  these  points. 

But  whatever  we  think  now,  we  can  hardly 
understand  much  that  men  have  written  in  the 
past  unless  we  keep  in  mind  the  ancient  tri¬ 
chotomy  of  body,  soul,  and  spirit. 

One  can  hardly,  for  example,  get  the  whole 
force  of  several  of  St.  Paul’s  most  striking  pas¬ 
sages,  unless  one  reads,  in  some  measure,  with  the 
eye  of  a  first-century  Corinthian,  familiar  from 
his  youth  up  with  breath-souls  on  one  side  of  the 
diaphragm  and  body-souls  on  the  other.  “For 
who  among  men,”  writes  the  apostle,  “knoweth 
the  things  of  a  man  save  the  pneuma  of  a  man 

ioo 


PRIMITIVE  SOULS  AND  GHOSTS 


which  is  in  him.  .  .  .  But  the  psychic  man  re- 
ceiveth  not  the  things  of  the  pneuma  .  .  .  and 
he  cannot  know  them  because  they  are  pneumat¬ 
ically  judged.”  “There  is  a  psychic  body;  and 
there  is  a  pneumatic  body.  ...  So  also  it  is 
written,  The  first  man  Adam  became  a  living 
body-soul,  the  last  Adam  became  a  quickening 
breath.  Howbeit  that  is  not  first  which  is  of  the 
breath-soul,  but  that  which  is  of  the  body-soul 
and  afterwards  that  which  is  of  the  pneuma.” 

Or  take  the  long  controversy  in  the  early 
church  over  the  origin  of  the  soul.  The  opinion 
which  finally  came  to  be  orthodox,  and  which, 
therefore,  we  are  all  supposed  to  hold,  is  that 
whatever  besides  the  body  finally  survives  death, 
for  better  or  for  worse,  is  a  breath-soul,  new- 
created  for  the  occasion,  and  sucked  into  our 
lungs  with  the  first  mouthful  of  air,  there  to  re¬ 
main  till  it  goes  out  with  the  last.  But,  for 
Traducians  like  Tertullian,  the  immortal  being  is 
a  body-soul,  always  material,  sometimes  visible, 
begotten  of  one  parent  and  conceived  by  the 
other  precisely  like  the  body  which  it  animates. 
But  Origen,  who  remained  always  half  heathen, 
held  to  an  immaterial  “mind-soul,”  preexistent, 
as  mind-souls  commonly  are,  and  subject  to 
metempsychosis  into  other  bodies. 

So  is  it  everywhere  with  most  of  our  litera¬ 
ture,  especially  our  hymns,  with  most  of  our 
half-subconscious  thinking,  and  with  most  of 

IOI 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


the  history  of  thought.  One  cannot  dip  into 
these  anywhere  without  striking  shortly,  along 
with  some  bit  of  primitive  astronomy,  some 
other  equally  primitive  idea  of  our  having  one  or 
more  souls. 

But,  unfortunately,  souls,  in  any  ancient  sense, 
simply  do  not  belong  anywhere  in  our  present- 
day  world-view.  A  generation  of  compulsory 
physiology  in  the  common  schools  has  made  the 
public  familiar  with  the  modern  scientific  con¬ 
ception  of  the  human  body  as  a  very  compli¬ 
cated  machine,  though  only  persons  who  devote 
their  lives  to  its  study  have  any  idea  how  com¬ 
plex  it  is,  with  its  single  nerve  cells  like  winter 
trees  against  the  sky,  and  its  more  separate 
parts  than  there  are  in  all  the  automobiles  that 
ever  came  out  of  Detroit.  But,  after  all,  the 
body  is  essentially  a  system  of  levers  and  pipes 
operated  by  a  gas  engine,  and  regulated  —  cer¬ 
tainly  in  part  —  by  an  elaborate  system  of  auto¬ 
matic  controls,  that  are  not  fundamentally  dif¬ 
ferent  from  the  temperature  compensation  of  a 
good  watch.  Sometimes  the  machine  gets  out  of 
gear.  Its  parts  sometimes  break.  In  the  end,  it 
wears  out  and  stops.  There  is  not  the  least  evi¬ 
dence  that  any  soul,  spirit,  breath,  psyche, 
pneuma,  or  the  like,  is  anywhere  involved. 

There  is,  to  be  sure,  a  considerable  body  of 
fact  which  goes  to  show  that  the  more  or  less 
self-conscious  “mind,”  which,  as  a  matter  of  ex- 

102  ■ 


PRIMITIVE  SOULS  AND  GHOSTS 


perience,  does,  apparently,  pull  a  muscle  when 
we  wiggle  a  finger,  is  also  concerned,  less  con¬ 
sciously,  when  we  mend  a  broken  bone,  and 
does,  in  some  fashion,  oversee  all  the  bodily  proc¬ 
esses.  But  this  New  Vitalism,  which  belongs, 
of  course,  to  our  present-day  Weltanschauung , 
is  altogether  a  different  matter  from  the  ancient 
doctrine  of  spirits.  The  old  vitalism,  which  as¬ 
sumed  some  sort  of  soul,  vital  principle,  or  the 
like,  survives  only  in  the  vocabulary  of  religion. 
Between  a  bodily  machine  that  runs  and  a  mind 
that  runs  it,  there  is  nothing  left  for  souls  to  do. 
Non  sunt  multiplicanda  entia  sine  causa. 

Along  with  souls  there  must  inevitably  go  by 
the  board  all  spirits,  devils,  angels,  and  witches. 
Devils  were  convenient  to  explain  storms,  dis¬ 
ease,  especially  mental  diseases,  and  the  perver¬ 
sity  of  men  who  do  not  believe  as  their  betters 
tell  them.  But  even  criminal  indictments  no 
longer  read  “by  instigation  of  Satan”;  and,  as 
Laplace  remarked  in  a  similar  connection,  we 
“have  no  need  of  that  hypothesis.”  With  devils 
went,  of  course,  witches. 

Yet  how  recent  it  all  is!  The  King  of  England 
who  gave  his  name  to  our  version  of  the  Scrip¬ 
tures  was  a  zealous  witch-finder,  who  made  ex¬ 
istence  very  burdensome  to  certain  of  his  sub¬ 
jects  whom  he  suspected  of  endangering  the 
royal  life  by  blowing  up  a  storm  when  the  king 
was  on  his  way  home  from  Denmark.  Eminent 

•  103 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


ecclesiastics,  Wesley  among  them,  stood  val¬ 
iantly  by  witches  and  devils  almost  up  to  the 
time  when  the  old  vitalism  began  to  break  down 
as  the  result  of  Lavoisier’s  work  on  the  body 
temperature  of  warm-blooded  animals,  shortly 
after  the  American  Revolution.  The  diabolical 
control  of  bodies  and  the  divine  right  of  kings 
went  out  about  together. 

Angels  belong  to  a  cosmology  in  which  an  ab¬ 
sentee  God,  a  sort  of  Business  Manager  of  the 
Universe,  sits  aloft  in  the  highest  of  his  heavens, 
dispatching  his  messengers  or  blowing  his  breath 
whenever  he  wants  anything  done.  They  have 
no  place  in  our  modern  conception  of  an  imma¬ 
nent  deity  who  acts  directly  and  continuously  on 
the  world.  Sir  Isaac  Newton’s  time  marks  about 
the  end  of  the  old  theory  that  brought  in  angels 
to  account  for  any  natural  phenomenon  —  un¬ 
less,  of  course,  we  count  as  essentially  angels  the 
personified  Natural  Laws  by  means  of  which, 
in  certain  quarters,  God  is  still  supposed  to 
work. 

Kepler,  for  example,  after  he  had  worked  out 
his  laws  of  planetary  motion,  shortly  after  1600, 
still  took  it  for  granted  that  a  special  angel 
carries  each  planet  round  the  sun.  Old  astron¬ 
omies,  discussing  the  new  theory  of  a  revolving 
earth,  show  an  angel  turning  a  crank  at  the 
north  pole;  and  Milton,  as  late  as  1667,  could 
still  write 

104 


PRIMITIVE  SOULS  AND  GHOSTS 


“Some  say  he  bid  his  angels  turn  askance 
The  poles  of  earth,  twice  ten  degrees  and  more, 
From  the  sun’s  axle;  they  with  labour  pushed 
Oblique  the  centric  globe.” 

But  all  this  has  gone  by. 

Naturally,  then,  the  more  such  words  as 
“soul,”  “spirit,”  “angel,”  or  “Satan”  appear 
in  sermons  and  hymns,  save  when  they  are 
clearly  seen  to  be  only  figures  of  speech,  the 
more  unreal  does  our  religion  tend  to  become. 
We  find  ourselves  saddled  with  four  or  five  words 
which  once  expressed  living  and  important  ideas. 
But  these  ideas  are  now  dead.  There  are  no 
angels  or  devils  in  our  modern  world.  We  do 
not  really  believe  in  either  souls  or  spirits.  The 
first  pair  we  have  frankly  dropped.  For  the 
second,  we  have  hunted  up  factitious  meanings, 
making  them  suggest  vaguely  so  much  of  the 
mind  as  is  concerned,  let  us  say,  in  reading  the 
Bible.  But  nobody  is  giving  any  coherent  ac¬ 
count  of  how  the  soul  or  the  spirit  differs  from 
the  mind,  or  how  each  is  related  to  the  other  or 
to  the  body.  Neither  word  has,  for  us,  anything 
of  its  immemorial  meaning.  So  there  we  are  with 
our  religion  resting  on  two  figures  of  speech,  a 
house  built  upon  the  sand. 

Practically,  then,  we  ought  frankly  to  recog¬ 
nize  that  the  only  profitable  significance  now  at¬ 
tachable  to  the  old  term  “soul”  is  the  somewhat 
technical  psychological  meaning,  “self.”  What- 

105 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 

ever  words  we  sing,  what  we  really  mean  is  al¬ 
ways, 

“  Myself  be  on  my  guard,” 

taking  “soul”  in  the  first  line  of  the  quatrain  no 
more  literally  than  “skies”  in  the  last. 

As  for  “spirit,”  a  term  whose  connotation 
ranges  all  the  way  from  “breath”  to  “disposi¬ 
tion,”  and  which  denotes  things  so  different  as 
the  second  alcohol  of  the  paraffin  series  and  the 
Third  Person  of  the  Athanasian  Trinity,  lends 
itself  much  too  easily  to  the  bombardment  of  un¬ 
fortified  minds.  The  meaning  in  ancient  texts  is 
clear,  and  the  word  is  useful.  But  when  any 
modern  person  uses  “spirit”  or  “spiritual,” 
then  look  out  for  every  sort  of  fallacy  and  equiv¬ 
ocation!  4 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  SURVIVAL 

Our  belief  in  immortality  rests  primarily  on  our 
dreams. 

The  body,  perhaps  with  various  souls  still  in 
it,  has  lain  asleep  in  cave  or  tent.  Meanwhile,  at 
least  one  of  our  souls  has  been  off  seeing  the 
world.  We  know  what  the  vagrant  spirit  has 
been  doing.  We  have  to  ask  concerning  the 
body.  Therefore,  are  we  the  one  and  not  the 
other.  Inevitably,  then,  most  peoples  have 
identified  the  self  with  the  soul  rather  than  with 
the  body. 

But  if  the  soul  can  be  away  from  the  body  be¬ 
tween  sleep  and  waking,  if,  moreover,  the  spirit¬ 
ual  eye  can  see  other  men  who  have  been  dead 
for  years,  nothing  can  be  clearer  than  that  a 
“life”  can  go  on  living  indefinitely.  And  since 
men  can  always  imagine  something  a  little  better 
than  they  have  yet  experienced,  and  hope  springs 
eternal  in  the  human  breast,  mankind  as  a  whole 
has  always  looked  forward  to  a  blessed  here¬ 
after.  The  soul,  therefore,  tends  to  be  distin¬ 
guished  from  the  bodily  life  and  to  become  the 
vehicle  of  immortality. 

To  this,  however,  there  are  numerous  ex- 

107 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


ceptions;  one  of  which,  inconveniently  enough, 
happens  to  be  the  Hebrews  of  Old  Testament 
times. 

The  Hebrews,  as  distinguished  from  the  Jews, 
did  not  believe  that  the  self  is  the  soul  or  that 
the  soul  survives.  In  fact,  it  is  pretty  difficult  to 
make  out  in  just  what  sense  the  Old  Testament 
worthies  can  be  said  to  have  believed  in  any 
sort  of  soul  whatever.  “ There  is,”  to  be  sure, 
“a  breath  in  man,  and  the  wind  of  the  Almighty 
giveth  him  understanding.”  But,  after  days 
that  are  as  grass,  “shall  the  dust  return  unto  the 
earth  as  it  was,  and  the  breath  go  back  to  God 
who  gave  it.”  “The  hand  of  the  Lord  was  upon 
me,”  says  that  extraordinary  passage  in  Eze¬ 
kiel,  “.  .  .  and  set  me  down  in  the  midst  of  the 
valley;  and  it  was  full  of  bones;  .  .  .  and  lo,  they 
were  very  dry.  ...  So  I  prophesied  as  I  was 
commanded  .  .  .  there  was  a  thundering  and  .  .  . 
an  earthquake,  and  the  bones  came  together, 
bone  to  his  bone  .  .  .  but  there  was  no  breath  in 
them.  .  .  .  Then  said  he  unto  me,  Prophesy  unto 
the  wind,  .  .  .  and  say  unto  the  wind,  Thus  saith 
the  Lord  God:  Come  from  the  four  winds,  O 
wind,  and  breathe  upon  these  slain.  ...  So  I 
prophesied  .  .  .  and  the  breath  came  unto  them 
and  they  lived,  and  stood  up  upon  their  feet,  an 
exceeding  great  army.”  Clearly,  the  life  is  in  the 
breath.  But  the  breath  comes  close  to  being 
only  ordinary  wind  —  so  far,  that  is  to  say,  as, 

108 


THE  PROBLEM  OF^SURVIVAL 

for  simple-minded  men,  any  sort  of  wind  is  in 
any  sense  ordinary. 

The  soul  of  man,  in  other  words,  tends  always 
more  or  less  to  identify  itself  with  the  atmos¬ 
phere  of  the  earth.  The  winds  are  the  breath  of 
God,  or  of  several  gods  or  giants,  blowing  from 
the  borders  of  the  world.  But  the  earth’s  at¬ 
mosphere  is  also  the  Spiritus  Mundi;  or  at  least 
it  contains  the  Holy  Spirit  very  much  as  “spirits 
of  wine,”  evaporated  into  the  air,  are  still  dis¬ 
cernible. 

A  living  creature,  therefore,  draws  its  breath 
for  the  sake,  in  part,  of  extracting  from  the  air 
those  “vital  spirits”  which  animate  its  body. 
The  animal  soul  is  a  part  of  the  World-Soul. 
The  last  of  the  animal  spirits  goes  off  with  the 
last  breath,  virtually  undistinguished  from  the 
dying  soul.  Even  the  great  Harvey  held  sub¬ 
stantially  this  view,  making  the  animal  heat 
ethereal  like  the  bodies  of  the  angels  and  the 
stars. 

“  Inspiration,”  then,  for  most  of  mankind,  has 
meant  literally  a  “breathing  in”  of  the  divine 
influence  out  of  the  air.  Our  own  figurative 
meaning  is  entirely  modern. 

This  general  conception  of  an  atmosphere 
filled  with  impalpable  intelligences,  of  the  wind 
as  the  breath  of  divinity,  of  an  Anima  Mundi 
present  in  the  air,  of  spirit  in  men’s  breath,  helps 
to  make  clear  why  the  ancient  world  found  it  so 

109 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


much  easier  than  we  do  now  to  believe  in  virgin 
births. 

Back  of  our  precise  modem  knowledge  of  the 
way  we  living  things  actually  do  come  about  — 
which,  after  all,  is  no  older  than  1840  —  lies  that 
other  and  quite  different  theory  which  appears 
everywhere  in  Bible,  creed,  and  all  ancient 
documents  of  our  civilization.  Back  of  that,  in 
turn,  lies  a  still  older  and  still  more  erroneous 
idea,  the  so-called  “spirit  theory.” 

Early  man,  pretty  universally,  seems  to  have 
taken  it  for  granted  that  he  has  only  one  parent 
—  of  course,  his  mother.  All  offspring  are  wan¬ 
dering  spirits  of  the  air,  frequently  ancestral 
ghosts,  sometimes,  pathetically,  the  souls  of  dead 
brothers,  often  “spirit-children,”  newly  created 
and  waiting  to  be  born.  They  lie  in  ambush  for 
their  mothers  in  the  groves  and  among  the  rocks; 
and  the  girls  who  do  not  want  babies,  when  they 
go  by,  pick  up  staves  and  hobble  along,  pre¬ 
tending  to  be  old  women.  But  those  who  desire 
children  expose  their  bodies  to  the  wind  from 
sacred  grottos,  visit  graves,  or  stand  in  the 
shadow  of  an  idol.  Most  commonly,  such  being 
the  way  of  spirits,  the  child-to-be  gets  into  the 
mother’s  food  or  drink  or  the  savor  of  the 
cooking  meal;  it  falls  on  her  back  as  a  banana 
blossom;  it  lurks  in  the  water  and  enters  her 
body  when  she  dips  a  foot.  Serpents  are  a 
favorite  vehicle,  especially  among  the  Greeks. 

no 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SURVIVAL 


In  the  final  stage  of  the  decaying  opinion,  the 
spirit-child  degenerates  into  a  mere  dream,  like 
the  six-tusked  white  elephant  of  Buddha’s  birth 
stories. 

Naturally,  the  spirit-child  has  no  concern  to 
select  a  wife  rather  than  a  maid.  Hence  the  be¬ 
lief,  once  well-nigh  universal,  in  occasional  vir¬ 
gin  births.  Primitively,  in  fact,  all  children  are 
fatherless  and  all  births  virgin,  if  we  use  “vir¬ 
gin”  in  the  extended  and  somewhat  technical 
sense  of  “parthenogenetic.”  In  Syria  they  still 
believe  that  a  woman  may  bear  children  to  a 
long  dead  husband,  a  departed  saint,  or  a  jinn. 

It  is,  however,  by  no  means  impossible  that 
in  the  more  sophisticated  accounts  of  virgin 
births  there  is  still  another  element. 

After  civilized  man  has  largely  abandoned  the 
idea  of  spirit-children,  and  has  learned  that 
human  reproduction  is,  in  general,  biparental, 
he  still  tends  to  retain  the  theory  that  the  child’s 
mother  provides  its  body,  but  its  father  its 
vires  formativce  or  soul.  Thus  Harvey,  discuss¬ 
ing  the  “efficient  cause  of  the  chick,”  is  quite 
at  loss  as  to  “the  manner  how  the  cock  and 
its  seed  doth  mint  and  coine  the  chicken  out 
of  the  egge.”  The  Roman  genius  inhered  in 
the  paterfamilias ,  and  passed  on  to  his  sons. 
The  same  general  doctrine  still  survives  in  the 
vulgar  error  that  children  favor  their  mothers  in 
looks,  but  their  fathers  in  disposition. 

hi 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


But  the  “soul”  which  the  father  transmits  to 
his  offspring,  is,  after  all,  only  his  own  anima 
which  he  himself  obtains  from  the  air.  Thus, 
by  a  roundabout  path,  a  portion  of  the  divine 
spirit  passes  from  the  lungs  of  the  living  man 
into  the  growing  tissues  of  his  unborn  child. 

Great  men,  however,  are  not  like  common 
mortals.  They  have  the  divine  spark  in  uncom¬ 
mon  measure.  They  partake  more  fully  than 
ordinary  men  of  the  nature  of  the  gods.  What 
more  logical,  then,  than  to  suppose  such  beings 
without  mortal  fathers,  taking  the  Spirit  un¬ 
diluted  and  at  first  hand?  How  else,  indeed,  can 
one  account  for  eminence? 

Thus,  apparently,  reasoned  the  ancient  world, 
holding  always  to  a  consistent  world-view.  It  is 
characteristic  of  our  theology  to  preserve  an 
idea  as  a  dogma  long  after  it  has  been  forgotten 
as  an  opinion. 

Just  what  is  it,  then,  which,  having  lost  its 
“breath,”  goes  down  into  Sheol,  no  longer  to 
praise  the  Lord,  nor  to  have  “any  more  a  remem¬ 
brance  forever  in  anything  that  is  done  under 
the  sun  ”  ?  It  is  not  quite  the  body,  whose  bones, 
at  least,  are  known  to  be  in  the  sepulcher.  It  is 
not  the  soul,  because  the  Hebrew  tongue  recog¬ 
nizes  only  such  media  for  the  self  as  heart  and 
breath,  and  has  no  word  for  self-conscious  soul. 
The  most  that  one  can  say  is  that  the  ancient 
Hebrews  seem  almost,  but  not  quite,  to  identify 

II 2 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SURVIVAL 


the  personality  with  the  body.  So  long  as  this 
has  air  in  its  lungs,  it  goes  to  and  fro  on  the 
earth.  Afterwards,  it  both  lies  in  the  grave,  and 
goes  down  to  the  common  grave  of  the  righteous 
and  the  wicked  in  Sheol.  “And  shall  they  not,” 
says  Ezekiel,  “lie  with  the  mighty  that  are 
fallen,  .  .  .  which  are  gone  down  to  hell  with  their 
weapons  of  war,  and  have  laid  their  swords  under 
their  heads,  and  their  iniquities  are  upon  their 
bones.”  It  all  boils  down  to  saying  that  the  Old 
Testament  writers,  before  Israel  came  under 
Persian  influence,  merely  retained,  quite  un¬ 
critically,  vague  survivals  of  the  general  primi¬ 
tive  belief  in  survival,  and  never  really  faced  the 
problem  at  all. 

Iran,  in  unknown  antiquity,  but  apparently 
somewhere  this  side  of  Zarathushtra,  attacked 
the  old  problem  from  a  new  side.  The  “life” 
goes,  and  we  are  dead.  May  not  the  life  come 
back,  and  we  live  again? 

On  this  line,  the  Persians  developed  an  elab¬ 
orate  eschatology.  There  is  no  all-embracing 
Sheol.  If  the  living  man  has  in  his  day  done  con¬ 
spicuously  more  evil  than  good,  his  soul,  three 
days  after  death,  drops  down  to  hell.  If  the  man 
has  been  conspicuously  righteous,  his  soul  makes 
its  way  to  heaven,  to  sit  on  a  throne  in  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  Ahura  Mazda.  Most  of  us  will  not  do 
either.  Our  good  deeds  just  about  offset  our 
bad  ones,  and  the  somewhat  automatic  judg- 

113 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


ment  of  their  balance  will  send  our  souls  to 
rather  a  colorless  limbo  to  await  the  general 
resurrection. 

At  the  end  of  the  age,  the  old  heaven  and  the 
old  earth  will  pass  away.  The  Shaoshyant,  of  the 
seed  of  Zarathushtra,  will  come  in  the  clouds  to 
judge  the  earth.  All  souls,  good,  bad,  and  indif¬ 
ferent,  will  return  to  their  former  bodies,  which 
have  been  preserved  for  them,  bones  in  the 
ground,  blood  in  the  water,  hair  in  the  plants, 
life  in  the  fire.  The  wicked  will  have  expiated 
their  sin;  and  hell  will  be  annexed  to  the  new 
earth,  to  make  room  for  the  generations  of  men. 
All  mankind  will  then  dwell  in  an  earthly  para¬ 
dise  for  ever  and  ever. 

Nobody  seems  to  have  made  out  whether  the 
Jews  borrowed  this  ancient  set  of  ideas  bodily 
during  and  after  the  exile;  or  whether,  shortly 
before  New  Testament  times,  given  the  same 
problem  and  the  same  stage  of  civilization,  they 
worked  out  a  good  deal  the  same  conclusion  on  the 
basis  of  nothing  more  than  a  few  hints.  At  any 
rate,  this  “messianic ”  eschatology  is  conspicuous 
enough  in  the  earlier  portions  of  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  text ;  for  nearly  a  century  afterwards  it  had 
a  considerable  place  in  Christian  doctrine;  and 
it  persisted  up  to  about  St.  Augustine’s  day. 

In  fact,  it  seems  never  to  have  entirely  died  out, 
so  that  every  once  in  a  while  it  has  revived.  The 
end  of  the  tenth  Christian  century  was  such  a 

114 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SURVIVAL 


time.  So,  too,  is  the  present,  as  we  get  in  sight  of 
the  end  of  our  second  millennium.  Pastor  Russell’s 
“The  Divine  Plan  of  the  Ages”  circulates  in 
twenty  languages,  five  million  copies  in  English 
alone.  Islam,  also,  has  always  held  close  to  the 
ancient  Persian  faith ;  while  a  modern  Christian 
theologian  has  worked  out  a  neat  chemical  theory, 
according  to  which  all  the  dry  solids  of  the  body, 
after  becoming  C02,  return  to  the  general  at¬ 
mosphere,  much  as  did  the  old  “breath”  when 
the  body  died.  This,  in  time,  is  picked  up  by 
growing  vegetation,  and  finally  built  into  the 
wood  of  long-lived  trees  there  to  await  the  final 
judgment. 

Materialism,  however,  whatever  its  form,  has 
always  a  structural  weakness;  so  that,  even 
among  so  unphilosophical  a  people  as  the  Jews, 
the  original  form  of  the  resurrection  theory  be¬ 
gan  to  break  down,  somewhere  between  the 
dates  of  Job  and  of  the  New  Testament. 

Among  Jewish  sectaries,  the  Pharisees  es¬ 
pecially  were  of  the  Zoroastrian  opinion;  while 
the  more  conservative  Sadducees  clung  to  the 
Old  Testament  doctrine  that  “there  is  no  resur¬ 
rection,  neither  angel  nor  spirit.”  There  are  hints 
in  Daniel,  there  is  clearly  set  forth  in  Baruch,  a 
pre-Christian  Pharisaic  theory  of  the  resurrec¬ 
tion  body  that  meets  most  of  the  more  obvious 
difficulties  of  the  older  form. 

All  souls,  according  to  Baruch,  at  the  last 

ii5 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


trump,  will  return  to  their  original  bodies, 
which,  thereupon,  will  arise  from  their  graves 
as  restored  personalities,  to  be  recognized  and 
greeted  by  their  risen  friends.  Later,  apparently 
more  or  less  gradually,  these  “ protoplasmic’* 
bodies  are  to  be  altered  into  “  pneumatic  ” 
bodies,  still  material,  to  be  sure,  but  of  a  finer 
sort,  and  imperishable.  Clothed  in  these  spirit¬ 
ual  bodies,  the  redeemed  will  inherit  the  King¬ 
dom  of  Heaven. 

Such,  in  brief,  seems  to  have  been  a  widely 
current  Pharisaic  opinion  just  before  one  of  the 
greatest  of  the  Pharisees  took  up  the  problem 
from  a  new  angle. 

St.  Paul,  as  we  sometimes  forget,  was  brought 
up  in  Tarsus.  And  Tarsus  was  “no  mean  city,” 
but  very  much  in  the  current  of  affairs,  well 
within  the  sphere  of  Greek  ideas,  and  for  a  cen¬ 
tury  the  seat  of  two  different  mystery  cults.  The 
apostle,  therefore,  had  the  advantages  of  a  pagan 
education.  To  this,  very  possibly,  we  owe  in  part 
the  highly  important  step  which  St.  Paul  took  — 
his  theory  that  the  transformation  of  the  proto¬ 
plasmic  into  the  pneumatic  body  takes  place  in 
the  grave  itself. 

In  a  way,  therefore,  this  Pauline  theory  is  a 
synthesis  between  the  breath-soul-self  group  of 
primitive  doctrines  and  the  bodily  resurrection 
theories  of  his  own  day.  On  the  whole,  however, 
in  form  at  least,  it  belongs  with  the  latter.  The 

116 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SURVIVAL 


immortal  soul  does  not,  as  in  the  other  case,  fly 
away,  leaving  the  body  behind  forever  in  the 
grave.  On  the  contrary,  the  body,  qua  body, 
changing  to  spirit,  disappears,  leaving  the  grave 
empty.  On  the  empty  tomb,  therefore,  hinges 
the  difference  between  St.  Paul  and,  let  us  say, 
Socrates. 

However,  the  apostle  himself  has  said  all  this 
a  great  deal  better  than  anybody  else  can  say 
it  for  him.  Only  one  must  be  careful  to  take 
the  text  just  as  it  stands;  and  not  try  to  read 
back  into  it  any  Christian  ideas  which  are  not 
there. 

For  the  Christian  world  has,  in  this  matter, 
not  taken  altogether  kindly  to  St.  Paul.  The 
early  church  was  essentially  Roman  —  and  the 
Romans,  by  no  means  a  subtile  people,  pre¬ 
ferred  their  doctrines  tough  and  raw.  So  the 
“ Apostles”  of  the  Creed  altered  egeiretai  soma 
pneumatikon  to  carnis  resurrectionem;  and  even 
the  Gospels,  as  their  text  now  stands,  seem  to  side 
with  the  cruder  doctrine.  The  Westminster  Con¬ 
fession  has  “all  the  dead  shall  be  raised  with  the 
self-same  bodies,  and  none  other.”  The  Thirty- 
Nine  Articles  read :  .  .  and  took  again  his  body, 

with  flesh,  bones,  and  all  things  appertaining  to 
the  perfection  of  man’s  nature.”  All  these  docu¬ 
ments,  one  hardly  need  point  out,  imply  that  the 
“  hospes ,  cornesque  corporis ,”  as  the  Emperor  Ha¬ 
drian  called  it,  is  material.  All  picture  crudely 

ii  7 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


some  millions  of  graves  popping  open  at  once, 
and  the  dead  stepping  forth. 

On  the  other  hand,  certain  modern  Spiritists, 
with  their  theory  of  an  etheric  body,  come  very 
close  to  the  Pauline  doctrine.  According  to  Sir 
Oliver  Lodge,  among  others,  since  all  matter  is 
only  a  state  or  function  of  the  universal  ether, 
the  selfsame  ether,  which  now  manifests  itself  to 
eye  and  touch  as  our  mortal  protoplasm,  may 
conceivably  take  on  another  and  immortal  form, 
without  affecting  in  the  least  our  self-conscious 
identity.  It  may  even,  conceivably,  alter  back 
and  forth  from  body  to  spirit,  or  even,  possibly, 
take  on  more  than  one  “spiritual”  form.  Of 
course,  the  ether  is  itself  hypothetical ;  and  the 
Relativists  threaten  to  banish  it  for  good  and  all. 
Nevertheless,  for  the  present,  any  general  con¬ 
ception  is  not  to  be  treated  lightly,  that  has  the 
support  of  two  such  thinkers  as  St.  Paul  and  Sir 
Oliver. 

Modern  scholarly  opinion  tends,  on  the  whole, 
to  take  the  other  horn  of  the  ancient  dilemma. 
Our  present  world-view  rather  looks  away  from 
any  bodily  resurrection,  either  as  flesh  or  spirit, 
and  toward  the  quite  antithetical  doctrine  of  an 
immortal,  non-material  mind. 

To  Socrates  and  to  Plato  belongs  the  merit  of 
being  the  first  of  mankind  to  dissociate  the  con¬ 
scious  self  from  any  taint  of  spirit.  The  mind, 
for  Plato,  is  pure  idea,  altogether  in  a  different 

118 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SURVIVAL 


category  from  any  sort  of  matter,  however  ten¬ 
uous,  and,  therefore,  by  nature,  preexistent  and 
indestructible.  Whether  this  “ mind-sour’  ties 
up  to  various  bodies  successively,  or  to  only  one, 
is  a  matter  of  detail.  Plato  himself,  like  the 
great  thinkers  of  the  East  who  came  still  earlier 
to  the  same  general  view,  happens  to  hold  the 
former  opinion.  He  chances,  also,  to  believe  in 
two  souls,  besides  the  philosophic  mind. 

For  the  modern  Platonist,  then,  our  self-con¬ 
sciousness  is  something  essentially  independent 
of  any  sort  of  body.  For  some  unknown  reason, 
we  find  it  convenient  to  employ,  for  a  few  score 
years  at  a  time,  a  certain  very  elaborate  set  of 
tools.  But  we  are  perfectly  well  able  all  the 
while  to  drop  one  set  and  pick  up  another,  or, 
if  occasion  be,  to  get  on  just  as  well  without 
any  implements  whatever.  For  such  a  person, 
therefore,  resurrection  of  the  flesh,  conversion 
into  spiritual  bodies,  the  whole  idea  of  souls  and 
ghosts  and  shades  and  doubles  and  etheric 
bodies  has  no  meaning.  The  mind  simply  loses 
interest  in  the  body;  and  the  body  falls  into 
decay. 

After  all,  what  do  we  moderns  mean  by  im¬ 
mortality?  Nothing  at  bottom  more  than  this, 
that,  after  we  are  dead  and  buried,  and  the 
psycho-physical  personality  which  our  friends 
once  knew  no  longer  walks  the  earth  as  it  did, 
some  being,  somewhere,  will  remember  the  oc- 

119 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


currences  of  our  lives  as  having  happened  to  him. 
However  much  more  this  being  may  recall  is 
quite  beside  the  point.  To  Plato,  largely,  we  owe 
this  simplification  of  our  problem. 

In  a  very  real  sense,  then,  all  our  controversy 
for  the  last  two  and  a  half  millenniums  over  the 
nature  of  man  and  the  conditions  of  the  future 
life  reduces  itself  to  the  question  whether  our 
complete  personality  —  since  we  can  never  be 
really  interested  in  less  —  inheres  in  the  mind 
alone,  or  whether  it  requires  also  some  sort  of 
body,  or  whether,  in  addition  to  both,  there  is 
some  sort  of  tertium  quid  which  we  most  com¬ 
monly  call  the  soul.  In  other  words,  is  man  a 
unity,  or  a  duality,  or  a  trinity? 

The  third  opinion  has,  on  the  whole,  pre¬ 
vailed  in  Christian  Europe.  We  still  speak  of 
body,  soul,  and  spirit,  or  of  body,  mind,  and 
soul ;  and  pre-scientific  physiology,  up  to  the  be¬ 
ginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  made  abun¬ 
dant  use  of  these  concepts. 

In  fact,  the  first  Christian  thinker  to  cut  loose 
from  all  primitive  ideas  was  the  great  Schoolman, 
Thomas  Aquinas,  hardly  more  than  six  hundred 
years  ago.  The  “Summa”  sets  forth,  in  effect, 
our  modern  dualism.  We  are  body  and  mind  — 
and  the  mind  is  non-material. 

St.  Thomas  still  remains,  for  the  majority  of 
Christians,  the  supreme  authority  on  all  these 
questions ;  and  we  are  all  supposed  to  follow  him. 

120 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SURVIVAL 


How  many  of  us  actually  do,  whole-heartedly, 
is  an  interesting  question.  In  any  case,  there  is 
this  to  be  said  for  the  Tomasian  doctrine;  we  do 
know  a  good  deal  directly  about  the  human 
mind,  and  we  do  know  the  human  body  a  great 
deal  more  in  detail  than  we  know  any  other  ma¬ 
terial  object.  On  the  other  hand,  concerning 
souls,  spirits,  ghosts,  shades,  guardian  angels, 
kas,  rans,  fravashis,  manes ,  doubles,  “old  men,” 
astral  bodies,  etheric  bodies,  vampires,  ecto¬ 
plasms,  pneumatic  bodies,  “controls,”  and 
daemons,  our  information  is,  for  the  present,  in 
much  less  satisfactory  shape.  So  far,  then,  as  it 
is  possible  to  account  for  the  present  and  the 
future  life  in  terms  of  body  and  mind  only,  the 
familiar  Law  of  Parsimony  is  not  without  au¬ 
thority. 

The  present-day  result  of  all  these  survivals  is 
decidedly  unfortunate;  since  we  now  find  our¬ 
selves  saddled  with  three  different  and  incom¬ 
patible  psychologies,  two  learned,  one  popular, 
where  two  only  would  be  ample. 

Our  scientific  psychology  presupposes  an  un¬ 
divided  psycho-physical  personality,  which  acts 
always  as  a  whole ;  so  that  all  parts  of  our  nature, 
body  and  mind  alike,  are  involved  in  whatever 
we  do  consciously,  and  even  trying  to  read  Ein¬ 
stein  is  in  part  a  muscular  act.  For  all  purposes 
of  scientific  description,  man  is  a  complete  unity, 
to  no  part  of  which  alone  can  any  act  be  assigned. 

121 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


Whatever  happens,  “we”  do  it.  This  psychol¬ 
ogy  is,  of  course,  “soulless.”  Persons  who  know 
little  of  the  methods  of  science  assume  that  it 
precludes  survival.  Sometimes  they  call  it  “ma¬ 
terialism.” 

But  for  much  of  our  philosophy  the  great 
gulf  in  the  universe  runs  between  “thoughts” 
and  “things”;  though  it  is  by  no  means  clear 
that  our  rigid  distinction  is  not  partly  logical 
rather  than  real.  A  strictly  philosophical  psy¬ 
chology,  therefore,  marks  off  sharply  the  body 
from  the  mind,  and  puts  them  in  such  different 
worlds  that  any  casual  relation  between  them 
either  way  is  quite  inconceivable.  This  is  sub¬ 
stantially  Plato’s  teaching.  This  also  is,  strictly, 
“soulless.” 

Finally,  we  have  the  popular  “theological” 
psychology,  which  is  a  survival  of  the  old  body- 
mind-soul-spirit  ideas  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Soul 
and  spirit  are  only  vaguely  distinguished.  Neither 
seems  to  have  much  of  anything  to  do  in  this 
world;  but  one  or  both  is,  apparently,  to  fly 
away  to  some  sort  of  vaguely  localized  heaven, 
which  in  its  turn  is  a  survival  from  an  astronomy 
of  corresponding  date.  Persons  who  hold  that 
this  spirit-soul  is  to  return  to  the  body  do  not 
always  get  on  comfortably  with  those  who  think 
it  will  not. 

The  results  of  all  this  confusion  of  opinion  are 
distinctly  unfortunate.  One  prominent  clergy- 

122  > 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SURVIVAL 


man  insists,  following  Plato,  that  we  shall  say, 
“I  am,”  not  “I  have,”  an  immortal  soul.  An¬ 
other  computes  that  the  State  of  Texas  alone  will 
contain  the  rehabilitated  protoplasm  of  all  the 
departed  sons  of  men  —  since  4000  b.c.  that  is  — 
allowing  thirty  square  feet  to  each.  To-day,  we 
listen  to  an  Easter  sermon,  based  on  a  narrative 
which,  apparently,  presupposes  a  return  of  the 
soul  to  the  body,  a  general  resurrection,  and  a 
final  judgment.  To-morrow,  if  there  is  a  death 
in  the  house,  the  same  clergyman  will  console  us 
with  the  diametrically  opposite  picture  of  a  com¬ 
plete  personality,  sans  judgment  and  sans  body, 
already  in  paradise.  Next  day,  he  will  change 
his  mind  once  more,  and  read  us  the  burial  serv¬ 
ice  with  extracts  from  Job,  for  whom  the  entire 
problem  is  ultimately  insoluble. 


CHAPTER  X 

“THE  NEW  REFORMATION” 

Once  to  every  man  and  nation  comes  the  moment  to  decide , 

In  the  strife  of  Truth  with  Falsehood ,  for  the  good  or  evil  side; 
Some  great  cause ,  God's  new  Messiah ,  offering  each  the  boon  or 
blight , 

Parts  the  goats  upon  the  left  hand ,  and  the  sheep  upon  the  right , 
And  the  choice  goes  by  forever  ’ twixt  that  darkness  and  that  light. 

Nowhere  does  history  repeat  itself  more  mo¬ 
notonously  than  in  the  field  of  religion.  The 
world,  like  the  individual,  has  its  hours  of  insight, 
its  lucky  times,  when  everything  drops  into 
place  and  all  the  clocks  strike  twelve.  Great 
ideas  are  in  the  air.  Great  leaders  find  followers 
to  match.  Civilization,  somewhat  suddenly, 
hitches  forward  to  another  age ;  and  a  revival  of 
religion  goes  along  with  the  rest. 

The  new  religion,  at  the  start,  is  fresh  and 
young  and  absorptive.  It  may  have  no  creed,  no 
ritual,  no  hymns,  no  fixed  ideas  of  any  sort;  or 
if  it  does  inherit  such  from  its  own  past,  it  holds 
them  lightly  and  always  subject  to  revision.  It 
picks  up  anything,  anywhere,  and  grows  by  what 
it  feeds  on.  Therefore,  do  a  new  religion  and  a 
flowering  of  civilization  commonly  go  together. 

This  period  of  all-devouring  youth  seldom 
lasts  more  than  a  couple  of  centuries.  The  new 
religion  promptly  develops  a  theology. 

124 


THE  NEW  REFORMATION 


Now  one  of  the  great  advantages  which  all 
science  enjoys,  compared  with  most  other  meth¬ 
ods  of  arriving  at  truth,  is  that  all  its  doctrines 
rest  directly  on  evidence,  and  are  always,  there¬ 
fore,  even  the  most  fundamental  of  them,  under 
examination.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  indeed,  natu¬ 
ral  science  has  almost  never  had  to  take  back 
any  of  its  main  conclusions.  But  there  is  always 
the  chance  that  a  New  Psychology  or  a  New 
Physics  may  come  up  over  the  horizon  ready  to 
blow  the  old  out  of  the  water.  All  science,  there¬ 
fore,  natural,  historical,  and  political  alike, 
though  it  stumble  and  stray,  always  in  the  end, 
and  of  itself,  finds  its  feet  again  and  comes  back 
to  the  right  path. 

Not  so  is  it  with  a  theology.  The  shakiest 
hypothesis,  once  discovered  in  Bible  or  Koran, 
once  passed  upon  by  caliph,  council,  or  pope,  be¬ 
comes  forthwith  a  portion  of  the  eternal  verities, 
to  be  questioned  only  at  both  temporal  and 
eternal  peril.  One  by  one,  therefore,  as  time  goes 
on,  all  the  various  paths  to  new  information  are 
blocked  by  dogmas.  The  prophet  gives  way  to 
the  priest.  Whatever  world-view  chances  to  be 
the  fashion  of  the  day  becomes  the  complete  and 
final  revelation  of  all  truth. 

Meanwhile,  secular  opinion  may  also  have 
stood  still,  as  it  did  in  our  own  civilization  for 
more  than  a  thousand  years.  All  is  then  well  with 
the  faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints.  Each  gen- 

125 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


eration  finds  itself  in  the  same  mental  environ¬ 
ment  as  its  fathers. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  world  may  move  —  as 
ours  did  after  1600.  Naturally,  then,  in  the 
course  of  time,  the  ancient  faith  will  consist 
largely  of  outgrown  world-views,  discarded  ter¬ 
minologies,  slogans  of  long-forgotten  controver¬ 
sies,  forms  of  words  which,  however  fresh  and 
living  once,  have  now  become  mere  cant. 

Priest  and  scholar,  therefore,  have  to  fight 
things  out  between  them.  The  scholar  argues  his 
case  on  the  evidence.  The  priest  retorts  with  the 
customary  persecution.  In  the  end,  commonly, 
the  man  in  the  street  takes  a  hand  to  see  fair 
play,  and  the  scholar  wins. 

If  the  points  at  issue  are  not  especially  funda¬ 
mental,  the  old  system  adjusts  itself  grudgingly 
to  the  new  opinion.  From  time  to  time,  always 
under  compulsion,  it  drops  a  little  of  its  impedi¬ 
menta  and  staggers  forward  a  few  steps  more. 
Then,  for  a  short  while,  the  old  religion  seems  to 
recover  a  little  of  its  youthful  power  of  assimi¬ 
lation  ;  but  the  growth  is  likely  to  be  rather  that 
of  a  lifeless  crystal  than  that  of  a  living  plant. 
But  if  the  difference  of  world-view  is  irreconcil¬ 
able,  then  the  old  superstition  has  to  go.  The 
repeated  adjustments  and  the  final  collapse  of 
the  primitive  Roman  paganism,  shortly  before 
the  Christian  era,  are  perhaps  the  most  striking 
instances  in  history  of  both  these  processes. 

126 


THE  NEW  REFORMATION 


When  an  established  religion  does  finally  go 
to  smash,  all  the  newer  religions  in  the  field,  all 
the  importations  from  other  lands,  all  the  newer 
sects  of  the  old  cult,  struggle  for  the  vacant  place. 
Nominally,  the  fittest  of  these  survives.  Actu¬ 
ally,  the  one  of  them  which  gets  the  best  start 
absorbs  the  rest,  retains  the  best  in  each  and  dis¬ 
cards  the  remainder.  No  historic  faith,  then,  is 
ever  the  child  of  one  other  only.  All  efficient  re¬ 
ligions  have  been  syncretic. 

Our  current  Protestant  fiction  has  it  that  our 
own  religion  rests  on  the  Old  Testament.  As  a 
matter  of  historical  fact,  it  is,  as  to  doctrines,  a 
synthesis  of  about  equal  parts  of  Pharisaism, 
Stoicism,  Neo-Platonism,  and  the  common  ele¬ 
ment  in  all  the  mystery  cults.  Even  the  earlier 
Fathers  of  the  Church  were  not  Jews.  They  were 
for  the  most  part  heathen,  converted  in  middle 
life,  after  their  ideas  had  set.  Augustine,  though 
anything  but  early,  was  a  Manichaean  at  thirty. 
None  of  these  ever  gave  up  his  philosophy.  He 
simply  added  on  his  Christain  faith,  and  fused 
the  two.  Our  traditional  picture  of  the  conver¬ 
sion  of  the  Roman  Empire,  which  shows  the  per¬ 
secutions  in  detail  but  stops  the  film  conven¬ 
iently  with  Constantine’s  discovery  of  the  side  on 
which  his  bread  was  buttered,  has  small  likeness 
to  what  actually  occurred. 

After  all,  why  should  the  Platonizing  Fathers 
give  up  either  their  old  philosophies  or  their  old 

127 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


religions?  Stoicism,  Neo-Platonism,  and  Mithra- 
ism  embodied  the  best  thinking  and  the  high¬ 
est  aspiration  of  their  day.  That  the  Christian 
Church,  in  the  end,  skimmed  the  cream  off  all 
three,  simply  puts  us  so  much  to  the  good. 

The  early  churchman,  then,  preserved  all  that 
was  sound  and  permanent  in  Judaism,  but  with¬ 
out  the  less  weighty  matters  of  its  Law.  He 
lifted  bodily  Isis  and  the  infant  Horus  for  his 
Madonnas,  and  Mithra’s  birthday  for  his  Christ¬ 
mas.  He  adopted  the  Stoic  Logos ,  and  much  of 
the  Stoic  ethic.  His  Trinity  came  out  of  Alexan¬ 
dria.  In  general,  like  Old  ’Omer, 

. .  .  what  he  thought  ’e  might  require, 

’E  went  and  took  ...” 

like  the  philosopher  he  was.  Naturally,  a  religion 
that  includes  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and 
done  in  four  great  civilizations  ought  properly  to 
inherit  the  earth. 

But  this  “period  of  infancy”  for  the  Church 
lasted  only  a  little  more  than  a  single  century. 
After  the  Platonizing  Fathers  came  the  Dog¬ 
matic  Fathers;  and  by  Augustine’s  day,  Christi¬ 
anity  had  grown  up.  There  is  less  difference  in 
outlook  and  vocabulary  between  Augustine  and 
Calvin  than  between  “Mark”  and  “John.” 

To  be  sure,  the  Church  has  learned  its  lessons, 
especially  during  the  last  hundred  years,  but  al¬ 
ways  as  an  old  man  learns.  Only  once,  in  the 

128 


THE  NEW  REFORMATION 


sixteenth  century,  did  it  become,  for  the  moment, 
as  a  little  child. 

But  the  Protestant  Reformation  came  almost 
two  hundred  years  too  soon.  It  belongs,  there¬ 
fore,  to  the  late  Middle  Ages,  instead  of  to  the 
early  modern  period,  and  so  is  on  the  wrong  side 
of  the  great  gulf  that  separates  the  darkness  from 
the  light.  The  practical  result  is,  that,  while  the 
Reformation  did  clean  up  a  few  obvious  abuses, 
it  left  the  entire  sub-structure  of  mediaeval  think¬ 
ing  untouched.  Luther  threw  his  inkstand  at  the 
Devil,  the  Calvinists  required  their  pastors  to 
confess  the  finger  of  God  in  every  vowel  point 
of  the  Masoretic  text.  Only  a  few  of  our  Protes¬ 
tant  clergy  have  even  yet  fully  the  layman’s 
Weltanschauung. 

If  those  famous  theses  could  have  gone  onto 
the  door  of  Wittenberg  Cathedral  at  about  the 
time,  let  us  say,  that  Halley  was  figuring  the  orbit 
of  his  equally  famous  comet,  the  situation  in  the 
religious  world  might  be  very  different  to-day. 
The  dogmatic  mind  was  then,  for  the  moment, 
loosened  up.  The  theological  world  might  then 
have  really  assimilated  the  new  science  and  the 
new  philosophy,  and  given  us  some  sort  of  con¬ 
sistent  world-view  that  should  include  every¬ 
thing.  There  might  even  have  been  some  such 
fundamental  upheaval,  some  such  permanent 
rearrangement  of  ideas,  as  marked  the  second 
Christian  century.  At  the  very  least,  something 

129 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


of  the  new  learning  might  have  penetrated  into 
the  old  theology  without  such  great  personal 
inconvenience  to  each  modernizing  scholar  and 
to  the  ecclesiastical  persons  who  first  took  on 
each  new  idea. 

But  as  it  was,  the  Church  and  the  world  failed 
to  synchronize.  The  Protestant  Reformation 
proved  only  a  false  dawn,  and  the  whole  job  has 
to  be  done  over  again  from  the  bottom.  The 
only  question  now  is,  whether  the  second  refor¬ 
mation,  unpleasant  as  it  will  undoubtedly  be, 
shall  be  got  through  with  now,  or  wait  till  by 
and  by  —  when  it  may  be  too  late. 

So  now  there  are  two  parties  within  the  Chris¬ 
tian  Church,  Roman  and  Protestant  alike.  One 
of  these  hopes,  by  tightening  the  bonds  of  dis¬ 
cipline,  by  censoring  more  rigidly  the  instruction 
of  youth,  by  calling  in  on  occasion  the  secular 
arm,  still  to  keep  the  Christian  world  blind  to 
everything  that  the  Middle  Ages  had  not  seen. 
The  other  is  trying  to  live  up  to  the  time-honored 
formula  of  diplomacy:  When  in  doubt,  tell  the 
truth.  And  because  this  is  certainly  an  age  of 
doubt,  it  proposes  that  we  shall  be  taught 
frankly  all  that  the  learned  world  now  knows. 
The  first  course  of  medicine  is  unquestionably 
easier  for  the  doctor,  and  probably  pleasanter 
for  the  patient.  Unfortunately,  in  like  crises  thus 
far  in  the  course  of  history,  the  method  has  not 
worked.  1 


130 


THE  NEW  REFORMATION 


And  yet,  as  things  are,  most  of  us  cannot  be 
quite  whole-heartedly  either  ‘  ‘  F undamentalists 1 * 
or  “Modernists.” 

‘‘Old  things  need  not  be  therefore  true, 

O  brother  men,  nor  yet  the  new.” 

We  average  laymen  want  both  the  old  faith  and 
the  new  sight.  But  we  want  a  real  synthesis 
between  them ;  not  any  mere  verbal  compromise. 

If  this  were  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  or  the  first 
century  a.d.,  or  any  one  of  various  periods  in  his¬ 
tory  which  it  is  not,  we  might  hope  for  some 
great  prophet  to  arise  to  lead  us  out  of  our  present 
wilderness.  Unfortunately,  this  sort  of  miracle 
no  longer  happens.  Our  prophets  are  mostly 
false,  and  paranoids  besides.  So,  as  things  are 
nowadays,  we  shall  have  to  look  to  the  general 
drift  of  democratic  opinion,  led  by  a  considerable 
number  of  open-minded  persons,  no  one  of  whom 
alone  will  do  very  much  toward  putting  the  old 
wine  into  the  new  bottles.  Any  one  of  us,  in  fact, 
who  cares  to  do  so,  may  at  least  not  hinder  the 
transfer. 

The  group  which,  in  particular,  is  to  take  the 
lead  can  hardly  be  conspicuously  lay.  We  lay¬ 
men  are  somewhat  too  busy,  and  a  great  deal  too 
ignorant.  Neither  will  it,  apparently,  contain 
any  large  proportion  of  the  working  clergy. 
They  also  are  too  busy  —  and  a  priest  is  always 
a  priest.  There  remain,  then,  only  the  scholars 

I3i 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  OF  RELIGION 


of  the  theological  schools.  They  only  have  the 
learning,  the  insight,  and  the  leisure.  Besides, 
it  was  they,  largely,  who  brought  us  to  our  pres¬ 
ent  pass;  it  is  for  them  to  get  us  out. 

I  have  already  said  that,  as  things  now  are, 
no  wise  man  will  ever  allow  himself  to  accept  as 
“science”  any  utterance  of  any  magazine  or 
newspaper  or  of  any  irresponsible  individual,  but 
only  such  facts  and  opinions  as  carry  the  hall¬ 
mark  of  the  universities.  The  rule  is  even  more 
imperative  in  the  field  of  divinity.  These  United 
States  are  over-full,  just  now,  with  teachers  of 
silly  religions  and  false  prophets  of  wiser  ones, 
precisely  as  the  Roman  world  was  two  millen¬ 
niums  ago.  Doubtless,  in  the  end,  matters  will 
straighten  out,  as  they  did  before;  and  we  shall 
all  come  to  a  common  understanding  of  our 
world  and  our  duty  in  it.  But,  meanwhile,  there 
is  no  better  service  that  we  of  shop  and  office  can 
render  to  the  religion  of  the  future  than  to  make 
ourselves  acquainted  at  first  hand  with  what  is 
actually  taught  in  the  leading  seminaries  of  the 
country,  and  accept  this  as  the  basis  of  our  own 
thinking.  Amidst  contemporary  oratory,  there 
is  nothing  that  the  wayfaring  man  can  better 
trust  than  the  general  consensus  of  the  learned 
and  pious  experts  of  the  theological  faculties. 
In  the  never-ending,  three-cornered  struggle 
among  priest,  prophet,  and  scholar,  we  outsiders, 
just  now,  will  most  wisely  back  the  scholar. 

132 


THE  NEW  REFORMATION 


If  we  do  this,  whole-heartedly,  we  ought  to  be 
ready  for  any  event.  After  all,  as  Huxley  once 
remarked,  “We  don’t  any  of  us  know  much  about 
the  universe.”  And  the  more  one  does  know,  the 
less  inclined  is  he  to  say  that  Plato  or  Kant  or 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge  or  Mrs.  Eddy  or  anybody  else 
is  wrong.  If,  therefore,  holy  men  of  old,  saints 
and  martyrs  and  prophets  and  philosophers,  have 
seemed  to  see  farther  into  realities  than  the  rest 
of  us  can  do,  I,  for  one,  see  no  reason  for  treating 
them  any  differently  from  the  poets,  artists, 
musicians,  and  men  of  science,  who  certainly  do 
see  and  hear  a  great  deal  to  which  I  am  blind 
and  deaf.  Speaking  as  a  naturalist,  I  am  pre¬ 
pared  to  believe  anything  of  a  universe  that 
contains  a  blade  of  grass. 

But  come  what  may,  we  have  always  “the 
starry  heavens  above  us  and  the  moral  law 
within,”  the  Ninth  Symphony,  the  Taj  Mahal, 
the  “Principia,”  and  the  discourses  in  “Q.” 


THE  END 


e 


